3 Reasons Your Candidate’s Experience Sucks

I’m a huge believer that a Recruiting department can be as effective at branding a company as any marketing department.  Think of how many people your recruiting teams come in contact with every day of every week of every month of this year and imagine all the goodwill it could create! With such awesome potential to do so much good for a brand, why do most candidates report having such a terrible experience with recruiting departments?

I believe it boils down to three simple reasons – yours could be one of or a combination of them:

1. The importance of creating a unique, branded candidate experience has not reached a level in your organization that can effect the changes necessary to do so OR it’s reached that level and that person is ineffective. For anything to change in a corporate environment it has to matter to someone WAY up the food chain.  Potentially higher than Recruiting or HR.  I mean CXO level commitment.  Once a CMO or a CFO or a CEO gets wind of brand disenfranchisement being caused by the Recruiting Department, something WILL change!  GetSatisfaction just published an infographic that shows industries loose billions of dollars due to bad customer service.  Bet most Recruiting departments are glad they don’t do similar studies on bad candidate experience!
2. It’s not being measured. Many HR folks talk about candidate experience and how important it is but I find few if any Recruiting departments are actually measuring the candidate experience.  If they are, they are measuring a small subset of “candidates” – those who actually got hired.  To get a “true” picture of your candidate’s experience, you have to measure everyone and be ready to listen.  Companies who do this learn very quickly that their assumptions (someone who applied and didn’t get an interview is naturally going to be pissed) are unfounded and that they can learn VOLUMES from listening to their candidates.
3. Anecdotes are taken as indicators. In every Recruiting department, there will be a handful of Recruiters who understand that what their candidates experience reflects on them, the department, the company and the industry and therefore they take candidate experience very seriously.  These exceptions usually forward (if the candidates don’t do it themselves) the kind emails and letters to leadership to show the effect they are having.  I see messages like, “best representative of your company I’ve ever spoken to”, “truly knowledgable about your company and industry – a pure professional” and “even though I was not selected for the role, I will always have high marks for XYZ, Co. because of her” coming from candidates to great recruiters.  A leader who assumes this is the norm is the proverbial ostrich with their head in the sand.  C’mon, who’s going to forward hate mail to their boss?

So there are three potential reasons candidates are having a bad experience with your employer brand.  What to do?  Again, three simple steps to creating a unique, branded candidate experience:

1. Measure it! Do it yourself or hire a company/consultant but you can’t know where you are going if you don’t know where you are! Measure everyone, anyone who applies, anyone who ends up in your CRM or talent community – EVERYONE.  At the very least, this shows your candidates that you are doing something positive.
2. Find the gaps and fill them.  Through establishing your baseline in step 1 above, you should be able to identify gaps or deficiencies in your candidate experience.  The gaps may be in process, people or technology but trust me, they are much easier to fix than you may imagine.  At Wachovia, we put in a HIGH TOUCH recruiting process for our Teller hiring groups – and they hired 17000 people a year!  Don’t let people tell you they “can’t”.  This goes for your recruiters (remember, it could be a people problem!) your IT partners, anyone – it can and should be done.  Don’t be the leader in #1 at the beginning of this blog, ineffectual.  Make it a priority by tying it to the bottom line and the red carpet will be rolled out for you to get it done.
3. Finally, INSTITUTIONALIZE it!  Take the changes you made in #2 above and ensure that even once you are gone, the legacy of great candidate experience will live on.  The best way to do this is to get it on a your Recruiting Department scorecard.  You get what you measure and if you begin to measure candidate experience (down to the recruiter level) and tie bonus, promotion etc to it in someway then you’ll find you get a repeatable, reliable process that consistently produces high marks from your candidates.

I hope you are inspired to tackle this very important topic now that it’s been conveyed in small, bite sized pieces.  Believing in, and being passionate about candidate experience is the final frontier of Recruiting.  Social media and technology have made it easier and easier to showcase your brand, company, department, and recruiters to candidates.  Aren’t you the least bit curious as to what they are saying?