5 Ways to Improve Your Candidate Experience Today

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

Candidate experience is a new concept in the recruiting and hiring space. With only 50% of companies even providing an automated response to candidates when a position is filled, the bar is set pretty low. Here are 5 ways to improve your candidate experience using small and targeted changes to your candidate engagement strategy.

Curate Good Content. Engaging each potential candidate will help your company attract the right people when hiring. You already have good content out there so curate all your videos, blogs, and news to share with those you want to inspire. When your recruiting team is able to keep potential recruits informed they’ll be more likely to be prepared for an interview.

Create a Talent Community. Talent communities not only help the recruiter, but it makes the candidate feel a sense of belonging. If a candidate has a place to go after they apply for a job it’ll make them feel like they’re not just submitting their resume in a black hole. Talent communities allow recruiters to share company culture and information about the company. Creating a sense of belonging even before an applicant has gotten a job will make them want to keep track of future opportunities.

Make it Easy to Apply for Jobs Online. This is one of the most important aspects of the candidate experience that needs to be perfected. Choosing technologies that allow you to create an easy to navigate, fully branded career page that will immediately thank applicants after submitting a resume. In order to cut down on half filled out resumes, make this process as easy as possible.

Communicate With Every Applicant. Even if the communication is an automated response it’s an important piece of the puzzle. A recent survey conducted by CareerXRoads stated that only 27% of the 56 companies surveyed have a formal process to decline external applicants. It’s important that you treat each and every candidate like a customer and a simple “You were not selected” letter goes a long way.

Provide Additional Resources. If you aren’t going to hire an applicant, go one step further in the candidate experience process and provide resources. Give them advice that will help them with their search process, they will be grateful, even though you didn’t’ hire them. Going this route will increase the amount of referrals you get and improve the word-of-mouth advertising in the job market. If you don’t have a resource, you may want to set up a customized career portal.

Following these five easy ways to improve candidate experience goes a long way into creating a better atmosphere for candidates who apply for jobs in your company. In order to recruit top talent its essential that you take care of the candidate just as you would treat any customer who walks into your store.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s an author who writes at Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @blogging4jobs. 

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