What is candidate experience?
It is a sum of all the candidate’s experiences with an employer that constitutes his/her opinion of an organization. This opinion-building process starts at the very first contact with potential employer communication. However, it includes all the application process stages, from the job search until the offer and hiring or rejecting candidate, or the offer.
Every stage of the interview process builds a unique impression of the company. If the process goes smooth, candidates will notice good organization of operations, focus on the candidate, swift communication, etc. If not, the wrong impressions will outweigh the right sides in the general recruitment experience. That will lead to forming an unfavorable opinion about a company that may spread among the potential candidates.
Candidate experience - opinion drives the decision
This is why it’s better to take care of the talent acquisition and ensure a positive candidate experience in the first place. People’s opinions are usually based on their experiences. And their views drive the decisions they make, for instance, whether they will accept an offer, join the company, or reject it. If company X is nighter Facebook, nor Google, IBM, or another big tech player, it has to place the candidate in the center of attention while recruiting. Otherwise, potential talents that might have joined the company would perceive it as unprofessional and chaotic.
Although the possibility of verifying the current state of the candidate experience is within grasp, it requires only asking the candidates for their feedback, and rarely do employers attach the proper importance to this process. This is an incorrect approach, since designing the job application process, they forget about the candidates themselves.
We’re way past the times when creating the job was enough to acquire employees. Now, the focus lies elsewhere. Employers have to encourage potential employees to fill those vacancies. It comes with a change of perspective – from the hire KPIs to building the recruiting process around the candidate because they are the most significant potential value to acquire. Apart from building a professional brand, candidate experience helps create important, long-lasting relations with the rejected candidates. Still, their skills, knowledge, and further development might drive them back to us someday.
Now, how does it work in Codibly?
Why 9 out of 10 of our candidates would recommend applying to Codibly?
Although we certainly think that our candidate experience is a ’work in progress’, at the end of 2020 we decided to check how our candidates actually see us as an organization. The analysis of that report let us identify our strengths and weaknesses that should be improved. We received 51 responses from candidates we were recruiting from July to December 2020.
Our strong suit
As it turned out, most of our candidates appreciated the substantive sides of the recruitment process, as well as the organizational and communication level. The infographic below shows how seemingly irrelevant details can actually decide the end opinion about the potential employer.
Candidate-centered recruitment process brings results
At first, we checked what do the candidates think about our application process. We wanted to know if they would recommend applying to Codibly based on their own candidate experience with our organization.
66% of the responders were recruited for positions in the development department, 34% for management and back-office positions.
And the results were terrific. 90% of the candidates would recommend applying to Codibly, and 53% would strongly encourage their friends to do so. It pleases us even more that only 6 % wouldn’t recommend us, although the dream result is 0% to which we strive every day. Especially that the reasons behind the lack of willingness for that recommendation were mostly connected with the candidate profiles that occurred to be less fitting to the role.
Yes, we took some actions to enhance and improve the candidate experience itself as we collected the data for the report, but the high rate of recommendation positively surprised us. We got the ultimate proof we’ve been going in the right direction to improve the candidate experience and that even small changes can change a lot.
How does Codibly place among other employers?
We also asked 23 o hired candidates (69,5% employed in our development department and 30,5% in the back office) how they rate our recruitment performance compared to other processes they participated in.
We also asked 23 o hired candidates (69,5% employed in our development department and 30,5% in the back office) how they rate our recruitment performance compared to other processes they participated in.
Again, we were struck by the number of positive ratings, as 74% would definitely recommend us comparing to their general recruitment experience, and 26% would probably do it as well.
We stay assured we’re on the right track to provide candidates excellent candidate experience during our hiring process as we’ve still got a lot to improve. But these results show us that a candidate-oriented recruitment process can be beneficial for both sides.
Interested in joining Codibly? Check our Career site!
