When it comes to your customers, you know exactly how to treat them. You:
- Offer to help your customers,
- Follow through on your promises,
- Keep customers in-the-know,
- And, listen to their feedback.
You understand great customer service is part of providing a great customer experience. Now think about how you treat your candidates. Do the same principles apply? If you don't give any thought to how you treat applicants, you won't draw the best employees to your company. Take our quiz to determine if you're providing a quality candidate experience.
Is your application process under 30 minutes?
A. Yes, candidates can complete the entire process, including uploading a resume, in less than 30 minutes.
B. No, candidates need to add in their personal information multiple times. On average, the process takes more than 50 minutes and many candidates drop off.
According to Indeed, applications with 30 screening questions will lose 40 percent of candidates. Cutting those questions in half, can reduce drop off rates by 55 percent.
Is your application process 100 percent digital and 100 percent mobile?
A. Yes, in fact we've heard our mobile version is better than our desktop version.
B. No, our process still uses some paper and our online application is hard-to-use on mobile.
Today's applicants do everything on their phone and won't tolerate a bad mobile experience. In fact, emails that display incorrectly on mobile may be deleted within three seconds.
Does your website offer a good first impression?
A. Yes, we highlight our company culture. Analytics show many of our users stay on our company and staff pages for at least a minute.
B. No, our site hasn't been updated in a long time and we don't get a lot of traffic.
Use your website to show visitors just how great your company is. Make sure to include how your company is serving the community or supporting a value that's central to your mission, sustainability, training or promoting from within.
Do you automatically reply to each applicant?
A. Yes, we send an email immediately notifying them that we received their application and we touch base throughout the process. We also notify candidates who didn't get the position.
B. No, we only contact those applicants we're interested in hiring.
Just because a candidate may not be a good fit for this position, doesn't mean they wouldn't be perfect for another. Maintaining good communication with candidates lays the foundation for a possible working relationship in the future.
Is your application process simple and straightforward?
A. Yes, we want to make sure our applicants have a smooth experience when they apply for a position with our company. We believe this process reflects our company experience.
B. No, our process requires multiple steps using multiple programs.
One of the SHRM recruitment goals for 2019 is improved candidate communication. SHRM suggests looking at all the touch points a candidate has with your process, anticipate questions and make a plan to preemptively provide the answers.
Does your branding show up throughout the process?
A. Yes, we're proud of our company and the perks we offer and want to make sure our applicants recognize it is us.
B. No, we use a third party to recruit and hire our employees, so our branding isn't present.
Your application process should never confuse the candidate. An applicant tracking system needs to include your logo, your company photo, your company colors and your company bio, not the software developers.
Scoring: Are You Providing a Quality Candidate Experience?
Mostly Yes: Congratulations! Your application process provides a great candidate experience. Your candidates feel as important as your customers, so they feel invested from the beginning.
Mostly No: You have some work to do to improve your candidate experience. By using an applicant tracking system, many of those No responses will turn to Yes. A cloud-based system, like an applicant tracking system, offers a fast, simple, mobile-friendly solution that not only automatically communicates with candidates, but showcases your branding.
