6 Spectacular Ways Big Companies are Improving Candidate Experience

When you have a bad experience with a restaurant you most likely wouldn’t go back. The same thing goes for candidate experience.

One of the most important recruiting initiatives in the HR landscape is improving candidate experience. Big companies that have an exceptional candidate experience strategy in place know that the work isn’t over. They always audit the process and fine-tune it from time to time to make sure it’s working out just the way they intended.

Improving candidate experience starts from the moment candidates apply or get sourced, to the very end of the hiring process. Essentially, every interaction with your company throughout the hiring process shapes the candidate’s impression of who you are as an employer.

Here are 6 great ways big companies are improving candidate experience and taking it to the next level.

Making the experience authentic and personalized

It’s not uncommon for candidates to receive recruiting emails that are so generic, they instantly dismiss them – or even worse – delete them.

To deliver an authentic candidate experience, companies should ensure that recruiters are feeling empowered. When recruiters truly understand their company’s values and what it has to offer, recruiters can then seamlessly reflect that in their messaging.

Improving candidate experience is not hard. Ultimately, recruiters should personalize conversations with candidates and treat them how they want to be treated. An easy way to do that is through a hiring platform. A hiring platform like EVA-REC can help you send automated emails that are personalized, sent in real-time, and instantly notify candidates of their application status. This way, candidates will feel valued, appreciated, and special. As a result, you can get better responses from them, as they’ll start to find the hiring process more fun and interactive rather than impersonal, long, and boring.

Building an informative and attractive career page

For many companies, an authentic candidate experience starts with an attractive and branded career page. Through a modern career page, you will be informing candidates of what to expect and simultaneously be improving candidate experience. A great career page should include authentic pictures and videos of team members that share their experience working at your company.

For example, Booking.com has put together engaging content and an interactive experience on their career page. Where candidates can watch heartwarming videos of teammates and check out what a day in their life really looks like. In fact, the videos are pretty personal and completely relatable to any typical job seeker. These videos not only enticed candidates to join Booking.com even more, but they also answered all their questions and concerns. In just a few minutes, candidates got a relative idea of the career path, culture and environment that the company has to offer.

Uber and Lyft also have career pages that are dedicated to their employees – their drivers. In their attractive career pages, they thoroughly describe company benefits, potential revenue, and perks and benefits. All of which are displayed in colorful, easy-to-read formats that are well aligned with their designated brands.

If you’re interested in creating a branded career page that converts, here’s how a hiring platform can help. A hiring platform like EVA-REC can help you create a branded career page that showcases your work environment, perks and benefits, pictures and videos, glowing team testimonials, and more! Unlike other dull career pages, a hiring platform like ours can help you reflect your company’s identity and personality on your job postings and modern career site. In tow, this will help motivate and encourage candidates to apply and help you significantly in improving candidate experience.

Creating easy and short job applications

When top talent debates whether or not to apply to a position, talent acquisition specialists should make sure that a great user experience is waiting for them. By that, we mean an accessible, navigable, and easy-to-use application process. Above all, if you’re aiming at improving candidate experience, then make sure your application process is mobile-friendly and caters to all tech-savvy candidates.

Millennials and Gen Z candidates expect their applications to take them no more than 15 minutes to complete. Or else, they’ll most likely tend to drop out.

So instead of having candidates manually input their entire resume – from background, experience, references and so on – recruiters can leverage hiring platforms instead. Through automated hiring platforms, recruiters can seamlessly create a smooth application process that takes no more than a couple of minutes. Where all candidates really need to do is simply upload their resume, add their contact information and answer a few questions. In essence, hiring platforms can incredibly help recruiters in completing in-depth screening and filtering tasks to support them in further improving candidate experience.

Being transparent about the hiring process

Ask any recruiter and they’ll tell you the same thing: making bad hires is costly. In fact, research shows that on average, a bad hire can cost a company around $4,000 (if not more). But the truth is, a bad hire can cost you more than money. It eventually leads to disruption in morale, productivity, and extra workload.

So if you’re aiming to attract top talent from the first time, it will definitely pay off to have a clear hiring process in store and communicate it effectively with candidates from the very start.

Every candidate who applies to a job might have questions about what to expect throughout the hiring and interviewing process. So, a big company like DigitalOcean seamlessly created an informative content hub of resources for all candidates. Through this hub, candidates can learn more about the hiring process, what to expect, and get answers to common FAQs. This way, the company managed to mitigate the back-and-forth emails where they were answering the same questions over and over again!

Another great tactic is by being transparent in job descriptions. Recruiters can be open about the salary range, day-to-day responsibilities, and the hiring timeline. When you give candidates upfront a timeline of the hiring process, they’ll know what to expect early on, before they even apply to the job.

Bear in mind that by lacking hiring transparency, companies might build mistrust with prospective candidates. Eventually, this may lead candidates to drop out of the hiring process fast, foster a negative impression of your brand, and propel negative word of mouth. So by building transparency from the very start, you’ll be improving candidate experience monumentally.

Responding to candidates in real time

Following up with candidates is crucial. Whether you decide to hire them or not. At the end of day, improving candidate experience starts by treating candidates just like customers. Which means, you should follow up with them in a timely manner, and preferably no longer than a day. Studies have shown that around 40% of candidates hear back from recruiters within a week, and 15% of them wait months for a response! Unsurprisingly, this could hold you back from improving candidate experience, especially since it dehumanizes the hiring process.

Companies like AT&T are improving candidate experience by instantly providing an online status for all candidates. This is done through a support telephone line that is dedicated for all candidates, where they can call at any time and ask as many questions as they want.

In addition, if you’re trying hard at improving candidate experience, a hiring platform can give you a hand with that. A hiring platform like EVA-REC helps recruiters send candidates automated follow-up emails which quickly update them on their application status to keep them in the loop. This way, candidates won’t feel like they’re left in the dark. Recruiters can even personalize these emails to add a personal touch that ultimately helps in improving candidate experience.

Constructing accurate job descriptions

One of the first things that grabs a candidate’s attention is your job description. So if you’re looking to connect with top talent, writing clear job descriptions will be your best shot. After all, first impressions really matter. When you write accurate, clear, and engaging job descriptions, you’ll be trimming down time-to-fill and simultaneously be improving candidate experience.

A few great pointers to keep in mind is to use clear job titles that describe tasks thoroughly, speak directly to candidates, avoid jargon, eliminate bias, and sell your job.

Adding pictures and videos will also work wonders. For example, Kuehne + Nagel add engaging videos to their job descriptions and use colors that are consistent with their brand. They even add a section called “Good reason to join” which works to entice candidates further.

Luckily, an end-to-end hiring platform like EVA-REC can help you write accurate and relevant job descriptions that bust any misconceptions about the job. It brings more structure to the way job descriptions are created and maintained. By only typing in the job title, EVA-REC will automatically autofill the skills section based on emerging jobs in the marketplace and up-to-date job requirements. Therefore, it helps you post accurate job descriptions that attract the right candidates for the job.

Tying it all together

At the end of the day, improving candidate experience is a must if you want to win the war for top talent. Once you provide meaningful touchpoints for every candidate, it won’t be hard to widely improve their experience. This applies to getting back to rejected candidates, soliciting feedback, replying back to candidates in a timely manner, keeping them in the loop, and guiding them from the hiring process step by step.

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