How Candidate Experience Can Be The New Competitive Edge

The demand for talent never stops. It ebbs and flows based on the economy, but the cyclical nature of employment means there are always people searching for jobs, and always employers looking to hire.

In strong economic times, candidates are in demand as employers rush to cater to them, inflating salaries and scrambling when new hires don’t show up to work.

When times are tough and employers have the choice of thousands of candidates, they don’t have to have to meet high compensation demands or feel the pressure of timely application replies.

Candidates started feeling this pinch more recently after a post-COVID hiring surge, and a sharp increase in layoffs. New US unemployment numbers are unexpectedly up slightly, while previous month gains were revised down. All of these shifts make it hard to plan, predict, and manage an ever-changing talent market.

Yet, there is one dial talent leaders can’t seem to move: job search satisfaction and candidate experience.

Nancy Boyce, a seasoned job seeker back on the market after a recent layoff sums it up this way: “the bar is on the floor with candidate experience at this point in time.”

Boyce has the added benefit of seeing all sides of the experience. An employer brand leader, she’s used to creating strategies to attract and retain talent to her employers. Now she’s got a critical eye on the employers she’s considering and how they’re managing the candidate experience.

“A positive candidate experience is the exception to the norm these days,” she says.

Except it’s not just these days. In an era marked by whiplash talent strategies where one moment employees are quitting too fast and the next they’re getting laid off in droves, no matter who has control, the experience hasn’t been great for at least a decade.

Teresa Green, Partner & Co-Lead of the People, Talent & Legal Practice for True Search, highlights the frustration candidates consistently feel.

“Candidates of all levels value relationships and transparency, and communication is foundational. You have to show respect and recognize that some information is better than no information.”

In North America, candidates citing a great experience with job search has hovered only around 26% for the past ten years according to ERE Media’s Candidate Experience Study.

“Hiring managers cannot properly review, screen, and contact the influx of applicant flow. Applicants may be applying to more jobs than ever before but they’re hearing back than fewer hiring managers,” says AJ Richichi, CEO of Sprockets, an AI-powered hiring platform designed to help ease these workflows.

Aaron Fung, couldn’t agree more. Fung, laid off from a tech company as part of a reorganization last October has been diligently job searching ever since.

“I keep track of every job I’ve applied to and its current status. Roughly 50% of companies I apply to are just not responding in any way. It’s frustrating to put yourself out there and, to have a company not even give you the courtesy of a straightforward ‘no’.”

Candidates are also skeptical about the content they’re consuming in the experience too. Potential Park’s 2024 careers site study found over 40% of US candidates have seen information on a career website they felt was not credible.

Green, previously Vice President of Talent Acquisition for Fannie Mae, sees the larger business challenge. “If you let people down by not communicating or providing a poor candidate experience, it’s hard to rebuild the relationship and get an accept.”

That means employers regularly run the risk of losing a great candidate by ignoring te whole of the experience. And all of this candidate frustration adds to already tenuous employer-employee relationships stemming from labor issues, debates over flexible working, and accessibility to healthcare and childcare.

The good news is more employers are asking for feedback. The same ERE study found that in 2023, 67% did compared to only 40% in 2022. The bad news? It mostly comes from new hires after they’ve already started. In 2023, only 24% of all candidates were invited to provide feedback on their candidate journey before their start date.

What’s really at stake though, is the impact the candidate experience has on an employer’s bottom line. Beyond the constant cost of hiring and rehiring, when candidates have a poor experience, they take it out on the brand through reviews, social commentary, and with their wallets as consumers.

Employers can press on and ignore the cost of candidate frustration and resentment, but that’s risky, especially as labor shortages continue to loom. Even AI can’t fill the ever-present gap of service and knowledge workers, especially those in already hard-to-fill industries such as mechanics, agriculture, education, and commerce.

This means proactively addressing candidate experience can become a powerful competitive opportunity for employers. Here’s how to take advantage of the opportunity:

Leverage Technology Thoughtfully: While AI and other technologies streamline recruitment processes, they must augment—not replace—human connections. Jessica Berrier, Senior Talent Consultant at ORS Partners, emphasizes the need to enhance transparency and personalization amid technological advancements.

“Technology can make the recruitment process more efficient benefiting the employer/candidate relationship,” she says, but notes we can’t ignore the importance of the moment.

“A candidate is making one of the most significant decisions in their lifetime. The transparency and human connection needs to be improved as the remedial elements of recruiting are absorbed by technological capabilities.”

Employers should assess the full extent of their of the candidate experience to determine the best points to leverage technology and the most impactful moments for building the candidate relationship.

Rethink Feedback: Organizations need a holistic approach to candidate feedback. Instead of simply collecting data at a single point in time, like the careers website, or at the time of hire, employers need to consider the evolution of the candidate journey.

For example, candidates going through interviews may have a hard time recalling specific pieces of feedback weeks or months after the hiring journey. Asking them to feedback on the experience immediately after will provide more valuable and actionable feedback.

Similarly, candidates not selected to move forward in the hiring process may be more disappointed than their successful counterparts, but they may also have more realistic and informative feedback to consider, and represent a larger segment of the population when it comes to influence.

Focus on the Positive: For organizations with tens or hundreds of thousands of candidates, it can be daunting to think about fixing the whole experience, or addressing it from top to bottom. Instead, start small and focus on small moments of positive opportunity especially given the magnitude of the job search process.

“Do you ever recall an extraordinary interview experience as a candidate?” asks Michael Glenn, Editor at ERE Media. “It’s unlikely, given that job hunting and interviewing are incredibly stressful.”

That’s where small, positive touches can be helpful. Add in micro touches to help make the journey easier. This can include personalized notes from hiring managers, posting a welcome sign in an online or physical waiting room, paying for parking for onsite interviews, small pieces of swag at key moments in the process, and even shortening the application process.

“Now I just get excited when someone’s application process is seamless,” says job seeker Boyce.

The bar is pretty easy to reach these days. For employers interested in a real competitive advantage, it can be a huge opportunity for those willing to take a leap big or small.