Mastering the Art of Candidate Experience
7 Tips to take your start-up's candidate experience to the next level.
Candidate Experience.
It’s a subject that’s been getting a lot of air time on LinkedIn lately, and rightfully so, albeit for the wrong reasons.
For whatever reason (and we’ll get into a couple of my guesses shortly), the average candidate experience has taken a nosedive throughout the year.
Blown out interview processes, rude and entitled (or perhaps just untrained) interviewers, non-existent feedback… I can go on.
My guess is that this is a result of the TA cuts we were seeing at the beginning of the year, and whilst the demand to hire and grow has started to return, perhaps the knowledge of how to do it properly (that left with those TA professionals) has not.
I also would assume that as 2023 has been such a forgiving year hiring wise, bending over backwards to accommodate candidates was not high on the agenda.
Nonetheless, general candidate experience is as bad as I’ve seen it for some time, and it’s certainly the worst I’ve seen it in the start-up/scale-up space since starting Scouut almost 3 years ago.
Which is such a shame, because providing a good candidate experience is so easy to do, and ultimately only boils down to 2 key things:
being nice (or at the very least respectful)
and being organised
The Problem(s)
There are really two problems that need addressing when it comes to providing a good candidate experience.
The 1st is that many employers don’t understand why it’s important.
For some reason hiring is often seen as a one sided affair, where any candidate would be lucky to have the opportunity to interview with you. This is just really backwards thinking.
Good quality candidates (especially software engineering candidates) are a rare commodity, and in a normal market, demand is significantly higher than supply.
Remember - employers pay us, not candidates - top performing software engineers aren’t the ones that need the help.
Anyway, it’s this backwards thinking that wrongly leads some (if not most) employers to disregard the need to provide a good candidate experience, because it’s simply not important or necessary in their eyes.
Of course, devs talk, and being a start-up, your market for talent is extremely small - it doesn’t take long to alienate your candidate pool (I posted about this in more detail here), and it’s one of the most damaging mistakes to make.
And if you think I’m being dramatic, in 2021 we had a meeting with one of Sydney’s most successful tech unicorns. They mentioned spending millions a year on correcting their awful employer brand, as a result of providing a poor candidate experience through their start-up to scale-up growth phase.
(2 years later, It hasn’t worked).
The 2nd is that many employers don’t know what it is.
A good candidate experience is sort of hard to quantify. The issue is, it’s relative to other candidate experiences provided by other companies.
There are ways to benchmark this though. Benchmarcx is the obvious way to go. But you could ask recruiters, or even the candidates you’re meeting for their opinion.
Ironically, asking candidates what they think of your candidate experience in itself will likely improve the experience they have! (I told you it was easy…)
Some Suggestions
Regardless of how you want to benchmark, there are many fool proof ways to improve the candidate experience on offer without needing to compare to others at all.
Here’s 7 of them:
Manage Expectations Through Clear Communication
Clearly communicate your entire hiring process from start to finish. This can be done as early as your advert copy, but should be reiterated in the first interview, ensuring everyone is on the same page.
It’s also a great opportunity to adjust the process for a candidate’s specific needs (maybe they are going away, perhaps they already have another offer or are at final stages, etc).
Provide Useful Feedback
Not to be confused with an outcome. An outcome is a yes or no, feedback is actually useful and benefits the candidate in some way.
It takes 5 minutes, you put it in your calendar at some point on the day of the interview, and you do it. If a candidate has given you 1-2 hours of their day, you can give 5 minutes in return.
Ensure Interviewers are Trained And Prepared to Interview
“It was an interrogation”
“They hadn’t read my CV”
“They seemed like they didn’t want to be there”
“They just read questions from a sheet”
Bad interviewers can cause so many issues, we’ve seen it happen first hand. Interviews should be 2 way, flowing conversations. You are being interviewed by the candidate as well, make sure your interviewers can pass the vibe check.
Run the Process Well
A good process and a good candidate experience is not the same thing. One is about the speed and efficiency of a process, the other is about the emotional feeling of being pushed through said process.
You can have a good candidate experience with a bad process, and vice versa. Do they go hand in hand? Absolutely. But one does not inherently come as a result of the other.
We have a client that runs a 5 hour onsite interview (their 3rd and final stage). In no world is this good process.
Despite this, we’ve had 3 candidates attend, and 3 candidates offered (what can I say, we’re good…), and their feedback has been some of the best we’ve heard this year.
Sure, I’d like to hear the feedback of someone who fails too, maybe it won’t be as good, but it just goes to show that less than ideal process does not have to mean bad candidate experience.
Focus on Diversity & Inclusion
Put some time into researching and implementing strategies to promote DEI throughout the hiring process.
Where possible, representation of those conducting interviews should be diverse, and any special requests from candidates should at the very least be listened to, and accommodated where reasonable and possible.
There’s also a big push on LinkedIn from a few loud advocates to require a video recording to apply to a job. DON’T do this. Most candidates will immediately ignore the opportunity to apply, but it also takes your DEI push in the complete opposite direction, as it massively increases the potential for bias to creep in.
Be Careful of the ATS
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) will at some point be vital within your business. However, they are often introduced too early, are almost always poorly used, and basically do nothing to improve candidate experience.
To be clear, an ATS is mainly used for two things. To keep track of process internally, and to pool candidates for future hiring endeavours.
Most of these systems make the candidate experience worse (as they remove a human element), and in my opinion should be avoided until they are absolutely necessary due to the scale of hiring that you’re doing.
And Finally, Stop Being a Twat
Sorry. It is what it is.
We see it all the time. Ultra high performers leave day jobs and start a start-up. Funding gets secured, they’re on cloud 9, about to change the world.
Then reality hits. There’s a few hundred of you, you’re not that special, and good candidates won’t put up with being treated like dickheads.
Taking a more self aware, human approach goes an absolute mile when it comes to transforming the candidate experience. Treat people how you wanted to be treated, as they say.
Matt Cook // Co-Founder @ Scouut // 0477 622 408 // Matt@scouut.com.au
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