When you’re looking for employees to fill out your workplace, as an employer, you’re usually just focused on getting qualified people in who can start contributing to your company. But one aspect of employee recruitment that often falls under the radar of employers is what is called “the candidate experience.”
Essentially, this is what a potential employee experiences on the road to being hired, usually by a recruiter, though occasionally from management itself during the hiring process. The candidate experience is the critical first impression that a potentially employee forms of your hiring process—and ultimately your company—before ever coming to work on a regular basis. In many ways, this first impression can color their dominant impression of a company going forward, even as a valuable fulltime employee.
So what can be done to ensure a good candidate experience?
Share The Negatives
Honesty is always the best policy, and while it seems like it might not be a good idea for someone to be informed of the negatives of a workplace, there are some instances where this can actually enhance a hiring experience. Health care jobs, for example, can often share with potential hires some of the negatives involved in a particular job because this affects the health and safety of employees, and quickly helps to determine who is suitable for the job.
Respond Quickly
While employers need time to deliberate and make a decision, that doesn’t mean that the experience with potential hires needs to go into a media blackout. Acknowledging hire inquiries and acknowledging their attempts at contact in a timely manner go a long way towards forming a strong, professional bond even before a decision has been confirmed.
Start A Pipeline
One of the things that benefits employers when a good candidate experience is provided is that this potentially make hiring in the future even easier. Social or personal referrals are an increasingly valuable source of finding good employees, and if a person you hired has had a positive candidate experience, this makes it much more likely that acquaintances and other professional associates with similar qualifications may be connected to your organization through this initial hire.
It’s important that you find good people to do the jobs that you’re offering. But it can be surprisingly beneficial to your company to ensure that even before they start working, they are already having a good experience during the hiring process.
