Imagine this: You went to a restaurant for lunch.
There is a 30 min wait period and you decide to wait since you heard great things about their food.
After 45 minutes, you get a table but there is no waiter in sight to request a menu card.
A waiter finally comes up to you, looks disinterested in taking your order, and doesn’t even get you a water bottle.
You wait 20 more minutes after placing your order and decide you had enough. You get up and leave—without even tasting the food.
Now, the figurative restaurant is your job application process. If the process is slow, lengthy, and complicated, candidates will not have the patience to see it through.
If you as recruiters do not show an interest in them, keep them in the loop proactively, and nurture them, your candidates will go elsewhere for a job.
Moreover, even if your organization has a reputation as a great place to work, candidates will never find out because getting in itself is so problematic.
Good employer branding and robust corporate culture mean nothing if the candidate experience you provide is not up to the mark. It is a large part of your business and even if you are doing all the right things, there will always be improvements to be made.
By improving candidate experience, you can increase conversion rates and reduce cost per hire. The best way to do so is to collect and use candidate experience metrics and insights.
Use the data you gather to see how candidates interact with job postings, h ow they click through the application form, and what their profile looks like at different stages of the application process.
Shift your focus to improving your candidate experience! Let’s start with the basics and discuss how hiring metrics and insights can help create an awesome candidate experience.
Candidate experience metrics: Which are the most relevant?
#1 Time-to-hire
Time-to-hire is the length of time it takes to fill a vacancy. This is one of the most important candidate experience metrics because if you’re unable to fill positions quickly, you may be losing valuable resources in terms of productivity, morale, and revenue.
Time-to-hire is a metric that measures the average length of time it takes to fill an open position. You can measure this in days, weeks, or months, depending on your industry and how quickly you need to fill the vacancy.
For example, if you run a fast food restaurant with long lines of hungry customers waiting for their lunch orders and only one person is working the register while another employee is off sick with the flu, it would be important to find someone new as soon as possible.
If you can improve or make your time-to-hire metric quicker, you’ll be able to hire new employees faster. This will allow you to fill positions more quickly, increasing productivity and revenue.
Also read: Data-Driven Recruiting – All You Need To Know
#2 Interview-to-offer ratio
The next metric to track is the number of interviews it takes before you make an offer to a new employee. This is the number of interviews you conduct divided by the number of offers you make.
For example, if you conduct 10 interviews and hire only one new employee, your ratio is 10/1. This will help you determine whether your interview process is thorough enough or needs more work.
For example, if it takes, on average, three interviews for every hire in your company and there are only two people interviewing candidates at any given time, then you’re not going to be able to fill positions as fast as possible.
You can improve this by adding more interviewers or by training existing employees to conduct interviews. Once this metric is enhanced, your candidate experience will also improve because you can fill positions faster and more efficiently.
The speed at which you can fill a position is an important metric because it has a direct impact on your company’s bottom line. If you have to fill 10 positions and each position takes three months to fill, then that’s 30 months of lost productivity.
#3 Interview experience
This is a measure of how well you’ve trained your interviewers. You want to make sure that your interviewers are aware of their biases and that they work hard to eliminate them from the interview process. If an interviewer is biased against women, for example, this will show up in their interviews with female candidates. This is also an important candidate experience metrics.
Automated tools are a great way to reduce bias in the interview process. By using these tools, you can ensure that your interviews are more consistent and fair. Automated tools also help with candidate screening by allowing recruiters to quickly identify candidates who don’t meet the company’s requirements.
If you don’t have a structured interview process, it can be easy for bias to creep in. The best way to prevent this from happening is by hiring a professional recruiter who knows how to create a structured interview process that will help you identify the most qualified candidates.
Also read: 5 Steps To Create A Remote-First Candidate Experience In Recruitment
#4 Net promoter score (NPS)
NPS is another metric that can help enhance the candidate experience. It’s a simple question that you can ask at the end of an interview: “On a scale of 1-10, how likely is it that you would recommend us to a friend or colleague?”
The answer will give you insights into how your company is viewed by candidates. If your score is low, then there are areas where you must improve. You may need more training for interviewers or offer more information about what life at your company looks like.
On the other hand, a high NPS score doesn’t mean there’s no need for you to improve your candidate experience. It’s a good indicator that there are ways that you can make the process more seamless, and it will help you identify them. A LinkedIn study found that 78% of candidates say that their entire candidate experience is a clear indication of how a business values its employees.
For example, if many candidates say that they didn’t have all of their questions answered during the interview, then consider creating an FAQ page or providing more information about what life at your company looks like.
#5 Offer acceptance rate
A good offer acceptance rate is a strong indicator that candidates are satisfied with your interview process. If you have a low acceptance rate, then it’s likely that there are ways you could improve candidate experience.
For example, if many candidates didn’t feel like they had enough time to prepare for their interviews or weren’t sure what kind of questions they’d be asked, consider creating an FAQ page or providing more information about what life at your company looks like.
This metric is especially important to large companies that receive a lot of applications. It’s easy to ignore the candidates who aren’t right for your company, but if you want to improve the candidate experience, it’s important to find ways of making the process more personal.
For example, consider inviting applicants who were rejected back into the process as mentors or interviewers. You could also send them thank you notes and other forms of recognition for their efforts even though they weren’t selected. Remember, a study found that 73% of candidates say the job search is very stressful, so give it your best to make your candidate experience stress-free.
Also read: Joel Soucy’s Roadmap To Creating A Seamless Employee Experience
#6 Candidate drop-off
A bad candidate experience directly contributes to a high candidate drop-off rate. The candidate drop-off rate is the percentage of applicants who visited your career site but didn’t apply or those who abandoned filling out an application midway.
You’ll want to track this metric over time to see if it’s decreasing or increasing. If it’s going up, consider what you can do to keep candidates engaged and interested in applying for jobs with your company.
Make sure that your job listings are relevant and current, or create new ones based on feedback from applicants.
If your candidate drop-off rate is declining, you can celebrate this by highlighting the decrease in your recruiting efforts.
Expert tips for a memorable candidate experience
- Consider how the hire will fit in the company
When you begin efforts to improve your candidate experience, you must consider not only what the person will contribute to your organization but also how they will get along with existing employees.
Will this person be performing a specific function? If so, are there any metrics you can use to measure their performance? What is the salary range for this position? How important is it that we fill this vacancy quickly? Can we afford to take our time and find the perfect candidate?
Answer all these questions before you begin the search for your ideal hire.
Also read: Optimize Your Hiring Process With Recruitment Analytics
- Keep candidates well-informed
Make sure that your candidates know how their applications are doing. From the initial contact, until the current status of their application, your candidates should know where they are in the process. Use candidate relationship management software to keep your candidates well-informed.
Send a detailed offer letter that includes all pertinent information about the position to candidates. This can include salary, benefits, and other relevant details.
Give candidates a timeline of when they should expect to hear from the company. This will help them plan their lives around this new job opportunity, which is important to both parties involved.
If you need more time to make a decision about your candidates, be honest about it. This will help them move on with their lives as well as keep your company’s reputation intact.
- Adapt schedules to candidates’ needs
Schedule interviews and assessments so they match your candidates’ needs. For example, if you need to set up an interview with someone who works nights and weekends, do it during their off hours.
This will help keep everyone happy. Sometimes, the candidate can’t make it on time because of a sick child or some other emergency. Let them know that you understand and will reschedule for another day (or week). This can be advantageous to both parties. Because it shows that you care about their needs as well as the company’s needs.
You can effectively address these scheduling requirements by leveraging the efficiencies that HR technology tools offer. To ensure you get to use only the top platforms, ensure to check out the best HR software lists available in reputable review platforms.
- Ensure new hires’ eagerness to onboard
When it’s time for onboarding, make sure your new hire feels welcome and happy about joining the team. You can do this by creating an employee onboarding kit and sending a welcome email that includes the necessary information they need to get started. This could be the company’s mission statement, a list of benefits and perks, or even an overview of their role in the company.
This is the time to educate them on the company’s culture and values, as well as their role within it. It’s also an opportunity to show them what they can expect from you and your team. If they’re new to customer support, example scripts will help them get started quickly.
Be sure to go the extra mile to keep their enthusiasm high. Right from the time they learn they have been hired until they start their onboarding. If you can sustain this, your new hires will likely perform well in their work from day one onward.
- Job simulation
This is a great way to get your new hires ready for their first day of work. Job simulation helps them learn about their job and the tools they’ll use on it, as well as how it fits into the company’s operations. You can also use it to test how well they grasp procedures and policies.
Job simulations are a growing trend among employers, who view them as the most effective way to assess candidates’ abilities. With job simulations, you can replicate the conditions of real-world jobs. They can be used in a variety of roles, from help desk agents to marketers to technicians.
A job simulation can be as simple as walking them through their day with you. Or it could involve a more elaborate simulation that includes training materials and other tools.
Why candidate experience matters
Candidate experience is not just a part of the recruitment process; it’s a critical element that can significantly impact an organization’s ability to attract top talent. The way candidates perceive and interact with a company’s recruitment process can have far-reaching consequences.
The recruitment process is often the first interaction a candidate has with a company. A positive experience can enhance the company’s brand, while a negative one can tarnish it. In the age of social media and online reviews, candidates are quick to share their experiences, and these shared experiences can influence a company’s reputation.
A smooth and engaging candidate experience attracts top-quality candidates. Talented individuals have multiple options, and they tend to gravitate towards organizations that value and respect their time and efforts during the recruitment process.
Candidates who have a positive experience are more likely to accept job offers and remain with the company longer. A negative experience, on the other hand, can lead to declined offers and a higher turnover rate, which is costly for any organization.
The candidate experience is a reflection of a company’s culture and values. A respectful, transparent, and engaging process suggests a positive work environment, whereas a disorganized and impersonal process may indicate systemic issues within the organization.
In industries where competition for talent is fierce, the candidate experience can be a significant differentiator. Companies that invest in creating a positive candidate experience stand out and are more likely to attract the best talent.
Feedback from candidates can be invaluable in refining recruitment processes. Understanding where candidates face challenges or discomfort can help companies make necessary adjustments to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Use candidate experience metrics to leave lasting impressions
There you have it! The key candidate experience metrics and insights that you must consider to help improve candidate experience.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Working on enhancing the candidate experience is one way to do it.
It won’t be an overnight change, but if you stay consistent in your efforts, it will pay off.
