In today’s marketplace, 80% of talent say a single positive or negative candidate experience can change their minds about a role or company.
As recruiting moves ever more virtual, it’s increasingly important for organisations to think about and proactively manage their candidate experience across all digital touchpoints. But with increased activity comes heightened competition, so it’s becoming harder and harder for organisations to deliver a candidate experience that truly stands out from the crowd.
In this article, we’ll look at the latest CandE research, an annual benchmark research programme which studies the candidate experience at hundreds of organisations. With over 200,000 candidates responding, 90% of whom weren’t hired, these findings will help illuminate some of the key wants and needs of today’s talent market.
Let’s explore 4 key practices that can take your candidate experience to new heights and help you differentiate your employer brand from the competition.
1. Multimedia Content
The employer brand is a big part of the reason why someone wants to work for an organisation. A strong, descriptive and transparent brand will help companies attract talent and alleviate some of the challenges that recruiting the right candidates can create.
Bringing an employer brand to life in the virtual world, however, is a challenge for many organisations. Get this right, and it can drastically improve and enhance your candidate experience. Get it wrong, and you may lose out on talent to more competitive businesses.
According to the CandE research, 32% of candidates are looking for more content from existing employees and peers about company culture. This content should be brought to life in the form of videos, Q&As, live streaming and much more.
At Meet & Engage, we enable employers to automate this content and ensure candidates are inspired and nurtured across the hiring journey. Whether it’s during the attraction phase or post-offer, being able to serve up engaging multimedia content is a big difference-maker when it comes to enhancing the candidate experience.
2. Employee Testimonials
Transparency and authenticity are two of the most discernible aspects of a strong candidate experience. The latest data shows that candidates trust a company’s employees 3x more than the organisation to provide credible information on what it’s like to work there.
The most successful virtual recruiting strategies leverage the power of employee-generated content, whether that’s pre-recorded videos, Q&A discussions or conversations with recent hires. The key here is to provide an authentic and helpful experience for candidates.
According to the CandE research, 32% of candidates are looking for more content from existing employees and peers about company culture. That’s why employee voice is so strong and should not be ignored.
Whether you showcase brand ambassadors during live virtual hiring events or at key stages in the recruiting journey, this enables prospective talent to see themselves in the shoes of existing employees, which can have a sizable impact on the effectiveness of your candidate experience.
3. Live Hiring Events
Live virtual hiring events are a powerful way to connect hiring managers and employees with prospective talent.
By creating a schedule of live, virtual events for multiple candidate audiences, you can build a healthy pipeline of talent, enhance the candidate experience and nurture people through the application journey in a completely virtual world. This is a game changer for the world of recruitment.
Finding the right technology to use when running virtual events isn’t as easy as it sounds. Many platforms have limitations on what they can and can’t do, which may impact a company’s ability to share their employer brand and truly connect with people on a one-to-one basis.
While group chats and events are a great way to inform cohorts of candidates about a particular theme, these situations can be difficult for less confident individuals. At Meet & Engage, our Inspire & Nurture messaging platform allows employers to run group and 1-2-1 sessions, so employers can give candidates all the reassurance they need.
4. Chatbots
Chatbots are another great way to enhance the candidate experience, since these run and operate 24/7, which means candidates have instant access to personalised recruitment communications – anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Chatbots can plug into your careers website and make a massive difference for both hiring teams and candidates. For recruiters, chatbots help streamline and pre-qualify thousands of potential applicants, which saves time, resource and budget. For candidates, chatbots can provide quick, instant and seamless answers to help move people in the right direction towards applying for a role.
When used together, both live hiring events and chatbots can play a key role in differentiating an employer’s candidate experience.
What sets the most successful employers apart?
Companies that improve the candidate experience and provide more value to candidates in the attraction stage were shown by the CandE research to gain a competitive advantage.
67% of candidates from all companies gave a 4- or 5-star rating for the information they found on employers while doing research. That number jumps to 77% for CandE winners – a 10% difference.
Being able to supply candidates with the right information, when they need it, makes a massive difference to the candidate experience.
Consider this: CandE winning employers also said they make employee testimonials available 11% more often than all other companies, while 25% of CandE winners found employee brand ambassador or advocacy programs critical.
To bring your employer brand to life and deliver a top-notch candidate experience, you need to consider how each of these four areas can set your company apart from the competition.
Whether that means sharing multimedia content, showcasing employee testimonials, running live virtual events, or implementing chatbots, each of these areas must be carefully considered if you want to become renowned for an exceptional candidate experience.
