I was in the Denver airport this week, on my way home from a speaking engagement. The woman behind me in the security line was sharing her candidate experience with a friend. She was clearly excited – and it wasn’t so much about the money she was offered – it was about the experience she had. In fact she told her friend that she was unsure about the company going into the series of interviews she had that day. However, they made her experience seamless which made her fully engaged and ready to be their next star performer!
But this isn’t always easy. The candidate experience can be a challenge – as a recruiter, we have many interested parties to keep track of throughout each hiring process. In fact a typical recruiter has to communicate with over 200 interested parties each week. Don’t believe me? Let’s do the math…
- If a recruiter has 30 requisitions, that means they typically have 30 hiring managers.
- Let's say ten of those requisitions are in the screening phase.
- Each recruiter would screen 10 candidates.
- This equals 100 candidates to manage.
- In addition, the same recruiter would have 10 requisitions in the interview phase with three to five candidates in each role. That's another 40.
- There’s then about three people on each hiring team in addition to the manager.
- Don't forget you have to turn down all of the candidates that you didn't look forward to interview - about 60 from our scenario.
- In addition, we have about another five requisitions with offers and are probably working with five HR business partners to work out the comp plans.
If we add up all the touchpoints in the above scenario, that totals over 250 interested parties recruiters should communicate with each week.
No wonder candidate experience is a challenge for many Talent Acquisition teams!
Simplify the Process
Struggling with this issue? Here are some things you can do to improve your candidate and hiring manager experience:
- Make sure your hiring team is selling the opportunity, the team, and the company with authentic messages.
- Invest in technology solutions that make communicating with candidates easier and more effective. Scripted emails generated from an ATS are NOT the solution. Candidates are looking for personalization.
- Think about who is the best person to communicate which message. The woman in the airport was thrilled because the hiring manager created the offer letter in real-time, while they were negotiating compensation. She was thrilled with the lack of bureaucracy.
- What impression would your candidates have if your hiring managers could create offers in the moment?
- Think about reducing the requisition load per recruiter. If your focus is on creating a white glove experience, then staff your team appropriately.
- Audit your entire process and look for areas that are less than shiny.
- How up-to-date is your career site?
- Does it provide a personalized experience with relevant content?
- What about your job descriptions?
- Are they error free? Are they easy to understand?
- Reduce time through your process. According to research by Officevibe, top candidates are only on the market for 10 days. If it takes your hiring team 20 days to make a decision, you’ve lost out on a great hire.
I wish the woman from the airport all the best in her new role! Wouldn’t it be great if all of our candidates could be as thrilled with the recruiting process as she was?
