August 2018
A quick recap of what’s trending in the Candidate and Employee Experience world.
The Candidate Experience Report
Today’s available jobs are outpacing the number of active job seekers in the market, according to recent unemployment reports, making it a competitive job market for employers. If companies do not put time and care into the candidate experience they are providing they will not only lose out on best-fit talent, but they will also hurt their company’s reputation and ultimately the bottom line. The latest research by iCIMS, The Candidate Experience Report, explores the experience people go through as they search, apply and interview for jobs and how the quality of that experience is affecting employers. If 3 in 5 candidates abandon the application process due to bugs or other technical issues in your application process, it's time to have insight into how you can make improvements.
How to Build a Business Case for Candidate Experience and Convince Your Leaders to Invest
It’s refreshing and timely to see that candidate experience is a priority for so many HR leaders. But are we in danger of candidate experience initiatives losing steam because more often than not HR can’t show how these efforts create value to the business. How can you build a more robust business case to help secure buy-in? Read this article for a few tips on how to quantify the economic impact of candidate experience and get your initiatives funded.
Generations at Work: Why Candidate Experience is the Killer App
The team at Allegis has published a new report about recruiting and retaining Millennial and Gen Z talent. Never has the candidate experience been more important than with these digital natives. The report covers how to best source, attract and retain this next generation of talent. In addition, it offers a host of industry statistics that will make you realize the business impact a poor experience will have on this new workforce. Matt Charney, Allegis' Chief Content Officer, recently wrote a great blog post on the subject along with the click-to-apply ratios attached to how long your application process takes or how many questions you ask. With 60% of job seekers abandoning an application because it was too long or too complex means many companies are still not embracing the fundamentals. In the end, creating a better candidate experience means better candidates, no matter what generation those candidates happen to be from.
Mystery Shopping Your Candidate Experience
Your candidate experience is more than a fancy career site and an application to completion ratio. It’s a series of emotions a candidate has throughout your entire hiring process. There’s no better way to understand your candidate’s journey than by putting yourself in their shoes. In retail circles, this is commonly referred to as “mystery shopping,” a practice that reveals the customer experience from merchandising to the cash register. Plus, we've all likely seen an episode or two of UnderCover Boss that takes this concept to the airwaves. As a talent leader, “mystery shopping” your own candidate experience will help you understand the journey your candidates are on. Here's a quick read from UnderCover Recruiter with over 30 ways to make a candidate experience just that much more positive. Goes to show, that sometimes the big wins come from doing the small things right.
Are Candidates Ghosting You?
Now in an era of abundance, job seekers find themselves faced with learning how to professionally field multiple job offers. Enter job ghosting. It appears the workforce is finally reciprocating the lack of obligation employers have felt toward current and prospective employees for all these years. The tables may have finally turned leaving companies with the same negative experiences once held to the candidates during their own recruiting practices. As discussed in LinkedIn's blog post, don't let your lack of candidate experience be the reason you get ghosted on a critical new hire. Remember the golden rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Ghosting on candidates who have spent time and effort in your recruiting process, could cost you a ghosted purple squirrel candidate in return.
Shawna Berthold
Co-founder and CMO
