10 easy ways to up your candidate experience

Losing ideal candidates is a recruiter's worst nightmare. What's worse than losing ideal candidates? When candidates talk about their bad experiences with their friends, colleagues and even online. Whether a candidate gets the job or not, chances are, they will talk about you.

As a talent acquisition professional - you have to juggle a lot of tasks - so using your time to effectively improve how you hire and retain top talent is key.

It's time to wake up. When candidates repeatedly have a negative experience, it chases them away. A good candidate experience can be the difference between winning and losing a candidate.

Here are 10 easy ways to refresh your candidate experience - today.

1) Can candidates quickly find your jobs?

Make sure your career site is easy to find and navigate. Don't bury your job postings on your career site.

Feature the content you want candidates to engage with on your career site. Job postings, employee blogs and testimonials should be easy to find. If you bury this information, candidates will become frustrated and never even fill out an application.

2) Is your career site seamless?

User experience - whether it's good or bad - is another reflection of your brand. Make sure your career site's navigation is clear and easy to decipher and your jobs are easy to access.

To entice job seekers to learn more about your company, feature compelling content such as video and photos of your actual employees to show job seekers people in their true atmosphere. If candidates cannot find the content they are looking for, they will become frustrated with the process.

3) Is your career site mobile?

Mobile is a must. The number of users coming from devices other than desktop is rapidly growing each year. Technology is constantly changing so it's critical to optimize your career site to offer a great experience for the candidate across mobile, tablet and desktop.

4) Are you speaking to your ideal candidates?

Not every candidate that applies for a job is the right fit. Make sure the content on your career site engages the candidates you are trying to attract. Take notes on what your ideal candidates are looking for and alter your content and hiring process to accommodate their specific wants and needs.

Highlight what makes your company unique so job seekers can better decipher themselves if they are a good fit or not.

5) Is your hiring experience too complicated?

Admitting your hiring process is complicated is hard. A good candidate experience doesn't have to be easy but a bad candidate experience will chase attractive talent away. Don't confuse your candidates.

Outline the hiring process so candidates know what to expect and can be best prepared to handle each aspect.

6) How long is your application process?

Think about the crucial aspects of each step in your application process. Is everything necessary for this stage in your hiring process?

Talent Board surveyed over 75,000 job seekers and 43% revealed that the application process took 30 minutes or more, and 12% said it took over 60 minutes or more. Eliminate any unnecessary steps that might discourage candidates from applying - these steps can be moved to later on in the hiring process if necessary.

7) Are you effectively using feedback?

Want to know what candidates think about your hiring process? Just ask.

Take negative feedback and share with hiring managers and leadership to ensure you are constructively using feedback across the board - this is the only way to constantly improve your candidate experience and attract top talent.

8) Are you communicating your company culture?

Introduce candidates to employees on your career site. Avoid using stock photos and use real photos to convey the real atmosphere candidates can expect to be working in. Feature employee testimonials and quotes so candidates can get a real idea of what people think of working there.

9) Are you staying in touch?

Rejecting candidates is extremely difficult. Even though a candidate may not be a good fit for the job they are applying for, let them know why.

Give candidates specific feedback to help them improve in the areas that they fell short. Rejection has one of the biggest impacts on your brand so you should be conscious on how you are rejecting candidates or you could be losing candidates now and in the future.

10) Tie your talent acquisition team's performance to your candidate experience

In order to hold your entire recruiting team accountable, tie your recruiting objectives and key results to the candidate experience. Once everyone is involved in creating an employer brand that's reflective on the type talent you are trying to attract - you can create an impressive candidate experience that is unique to your brand.

Your candidate experience is a reflection of not only your employer brand but your business brand as well. An effective candidate experience should engage and excite the right candidates and also provide enough detail to help candidates who would not be a good fit self-select out. By facilitating thoughtful interactions throughout the candidate experience, you will create a unique and unforgettable experience for candidates.