Why Candidate Experience Is More Than Another BS Buzzword

There are a ton of meaningless buzzwords that get tossed out in the weird little world that is talent acquisition content marketing. “Talent communities,” for example, or “big data” or “diversity” are all pretty meaningless concepts that for some reason, people choose to make mountains of cash out of what are proverbial miniscule molehills at best to the bigger picture of recruiting.

I love to hate on this vacuous consultant doublespeak, but there’s one concept that, no matter how much I want to take my conventionally contrarian stance, find almost impossible to find fault with.  The concept, that is.  Its current state of affairs , however, are a different story entirely.

Making the business case for candidate experience is pretty easy. After all, there’s not only a ton of statistical documentation proving that it positively impacts both brand perception and bottom line results, but it’s also kind of the right thing to do morally — a common courtesy to let people know where their job application stands.

Of course, metrics and morals are two concepts that unfortunately hold little sway in the recruiting and staffing industry. Those of us who have hired for a while start looking at candidates as widgets on the human capital supply chain. It’s about filling requirements, and the candidates who fill those reqs, as a rule, have great experiences. The minute a candidate is out of consideration, however, for many recruiters and employers, that candidate becomes disposable and dispensable.

Recruiters know, in theory, that improving the candidate experience is a good thing. We get the black hole is a black mark on our clients and our profession. In practice, though, solving this challenge is just more trouble than it’s worth, right?

Wrong. Here are 3 reasons that a better candidate experience is worth investing in:

1. More Referrals: Referrals have been the number one external source of hire for years. Referred candidates are 14 times more likely to end up with an offer than other applicants. Just because a candidate isn’t the right fit doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who is. Closing the loop can open a door to their network.
2. Less Compensation: Data from the Candidate Experience Awards suggests that companies outperforming their sector in terms of candidate experience end up paying their new hires between 5 to 15 percent less in starting salary. That means less losing out on offers because of comp, and faster time to fill, too.
3. Better Recruiting Karma: Every recruiter, at some point or another, has had a candidate go over his or her head and straight to the hiring manager or client. You never know who knows who, particularly in a small market or niche industry. Treat a candidate poorly and it’s going to come back to bite you. Given most recruiters’ job stability, building karma credits never hurts, because sooner or later, we’re all going to be candidates again, too.

Plus, we all know what it’s like to find that perfect profile or resume and never get a call back, no matter what we do or how hard we try. Now, imagine how your candidates feel. How easy is it to say thanks but no thanks? Not hard.

Originally published on the Human Capitalist. Sorry, it wasn’t even good the first time.