From Software to Solutions: Surveying Candidate Experiences with Survale

From software development to building candidate experience solutions, HR technology has changed drastically over the years. This has affected how we gather feedback from candidates, how HR professionals contribute to NPS scores, how TA teams hire successfully, and much more.

Jason Moreau, CEO of Survale, Inc., joined us on Talent Experience Live to share his expertise on exactly how the candidate journey has changed and the importance of aligning technology with human interaction to foster meaningful candidate connections.

Read on for highlights, or view the entire episode right here.

In This Article

What inspired Survale?

Early in his career, Moreau, a veteran of the HR software industry, recognized that a positive experience is key to talent attraction and conversion — way before “candidate experience” became the buzzword it is today.

In 2016, Moreau launched Survale Inc., a talent survey and analytics platform that gathers candidate feedback in real-time, giving employers insight on how to optimize their organization’s recruiting, hiring, and onboarding experiences.

Often, the issues that break the candidate experience are little things that fly under an employer’s radar but wave red flags to candidates, causing them to bounce. Candidate surveys are key to detecting those problems before they spiral and leave employers scrambling to fill talent pipelines.
“Measuring people, process, and technology is really where we have come from,” Moreau said.

How has the digital experience evolved based on candidate feedback?

Just over a decade ago, online job applicants commonly had to answer dozens of questions in a clunky apply process. Eventually, people refused to participate and employers got the message.
“It’s minimal friction now to be able to apply. That’s really what employers have adapted to,” Moreau said.

From streamlined online apply processes to 24/7 chatbots to using AI algorithms to parse and screen resumes, the digital talent experience is evolving to keep pace with today’s consumer-oriented expectations.

While integrating these technologies is becoming a must-have, automation and AI without a balance of human interaction is leaving candidates feeling disconnected, Moreau said. There’s also a general feeling of distrust among job candidates regarding whether AI algorithms are biased, he added.

“Every candidate out there ultimately wants to be able to talk to a manager or a recruiter at minimum,” Moreau said. “Sometimes the candidate’s best shot is their personality. And personalities don’t always shine on a resume.”

Related resource: How Franciscan Health Puts the “Care” Back in Healthcare Hiring

What data does Survale capture to reveal needed improvements?

The Survale survey tool integrates into the back end of an organization’s system — for example, the ATS, CRM, or HRMS — and gathers both quantitative and qualitative insight from candidates.
Survale’s analytics then surface insights regarding negative issues and needed improvements and on the other end of the spectrum, positive aspects and how to replicate those.

The survey tool can illuminate challenges small and large, including questions of employer brand accuracy and whether the organization is attracting the right candidates, Moreau said.
“Understanding your brand is very important,” Moreau emphasized. “If you have a good brand, your pipeline tends to be filled with quality candidates. Quality candidates ultimately are being effectively hired into a role that fits them.”

On the other hand, branding misfires often are tied to cyclical problems like consistently placing poor-fit candidates into critical job roles — with high turnover rates as a result.

Case Study: How DHL Delivers an Irresistible Employer Brand That Drives Results

What metrics do you use to evaluate the candidate experience?

In Moreau’s experience, commonly used HR metrics also correlate strongly with candidate satisfaction:

• Faster time to fill

• High offer acceptance rates

• Efficiency in the hiring process

• High retention rates

• Brand effectiveness

“A lot of those same fundamentals do translate to satisfaction and experiences, it’s just looking at it through a different lens sometimes.”

How are Survale clients improving the interview experience?

Moreau shared some striking examples of how employers can use candidate survey data to make meaningful changes in the interview experience — a critical aspect of the candidate journey because of the interpersonal skills needed by interviewers.

One Survale client, a global tech company with consistently low NPS numbers for one region, drilled down to a straightforward problem: Managers in that region lacked knowledge and experience conducting interviews.

“It was as simple as identifying that set of managers and [realizing] that they just didn’t know how to interview,” Moreau said. After some training on interview prep and technique, NPS metrics for that region skyrocketed within 90 days.

Survale also has seen organizations improve the interview experience by tying NPS feedback on individual hiring team members to their performance goals and compensation packages.
“It’s really taking these satisfaction rates to the next level and aligning organizations [on goals and recruiter performance].”

What’s the most prevalent complaint among job candidates today?

The answer isn’t anything new: “Candidates feel as if their time is not being valued,” Moreau said. Reasons given for this include:

• Interviewers showing up late

• Being asked repetitive questions over multiple interviews

• Interviews running far beyond the allotted time

Key takeaways:

• Coach hiring team members to respect candidates’ time.

• Align interviewers around information gathered during the process to avoid repeating questions.

Pro Tip: Maximize hiring quality with Phenom Interview Intelligence

How can employers prevent candidate ghosting?

Candidate ghosting — both for interviews and (even worse) Day 1 on the job — is still a scary challenge, particularly for high-volume roles, Survale has found. A major cause for ghosting is lack of communication from the time of the job offer to a new hire’s start date.

“A lot of this hiring is just completely automated, where [candidates] haven’t talked to anybody,” Moreau pointed out. “Is ghosting an issue because nobody actually reached out and talked [to the candidate], or is it an issue because technology isn’t keeping [the candidate] engaged during that time period? You need to find that out, because it’s a big expense.”

Key takeaways:

• Keep human connection front and center in hiring processes, even when introducing technology to drive efficiency.

• Continue engagement post-job offer.

“If you don’t reach out and talk to them, or have some kind of communication, there are other organizations still knocking on their door,” Moreau said.

To learn more about creating best-in-class candidate experiences, check out our Definitive Guide to Candidate Experience.