There are various types of tools available on the market that can help improve the candidate experience by streamlining the entire process. Many recruiting solutions are automating the manual activities involved in hiring. Measuring progress and reports with actionable insights are available with these robust and efficient recruitment tools and technologies. These are transforming traditional hiring into a faster and more efficient process, which translates into a better candidate experience. But to make it better, organizations first need to measure and understand the state of candidate experience.
How to measure the candidate’s experience
Are you making every effort to evaluate the candidate’s experience?
Consider these methods to monitor the candidate’s experience and identify areas for development.
Gather and evaluate candidate feedback
Request the candidates to rate their experience at the end of the application process. Send feedback questionnaires that include questions about their entire experience, whether they would apply to your organization again, and whether they would recommend your company to other job seekers.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is increasingly being used by businesses to assess candidate experience. It reflects how likely it is to convert applicants into promoters and how your organization can benefit from it.
Keep track of important KPIs
While candidate feedback provides the most accurate data and statistics, here are a few recruiting metrics that can help to correlate to candidate experience:
Recruiter response time:
Keep track of how long it takes a candidate to hear back from your company after submitting an application. This will indicate whether or not there is an opportunity for improvement in communication and response time.
Offer acceptance rate:
Keep track of how many people accept job offers to see if your organization made a positive impact during the hiring process. Hiring solutions like an applicant tracking system or candidate management software can help recruiting team keep track of the offer acceptance rate and other metrics.
New employee satisfaction rate:
Collect feedback from new employees after a specific period, like 30 days or 6 months to determine their level of satisfaction and try to determine how well they have acclimatized to the new environment. This will provide useful information about the onboarding process and can be done through pulse surveys through employee management solutions.
Time to productivity:
How long does it take for new employees to catch up and become completely productive? This metric is also defined by some recruiters as the time it takes new employees to achieve the job competency of an employee with two years of experience at the organization. The required data can be collected through employee tracking software, but some employee management or HR software offers these insights and reports automatically.
Employee retention:
Assess new hire retention rates as well as voluntary and involuntary attrition rates. Voluntary turnover indicates that new workers are dissatisfied with one or more areas of your organization, whereas involuntary turnover indicates that you recruited unsuitable people. Again, employee or workforce management tools offer attrition data and different types of reporting for their users.
Conversion rates on your career page:
Determine how many individuals visit your career page and then apply for a position. Conversion rates for individual job adverts can also be tracked by recruitment solutions like ATS or candidate management software.
Application drop-off:
How many candidates begin the application process but then abandon it? Determine whether your application procedure is overly complicated, or whether some other factors are deterring applicants and making them drop out in the middle of the hiring process. Candidate management software can help recruiting teams maintain continuous communication and make applying easier for candidates.
Monitor channels for candidate feedback and comments
Keep track of what people are saying about the organization on employer review sites and social media. Job seekers nowadays are more aware and informed than ever before, frequently reading employer reviews before applying for a position. Indeed, 55% of job seekers admit they will avoid organizations after reading poor reviews. So, companies will risk losing high-quality prospects if they don’t take negative feedback seriously and own up to their recruiting mistakes.
Candidates may also discuss their experiences on social media platforms and online discussion groups and forums. These personal insights provide prospective candidates with a transparent view of your organization. Also, organizations can view the candidates’ comments and understand how they feel about the hiring process and organization.
Request feedback from new recruits on the onboarding process
Once a candidate is recruited, the task of offering a pleasant experience is not done. Organizations want employees to remain optimistic about themselves throughout their initial days and maintain a positive image of themselves. 69% of workers are more likely to stay with a firm for three years if they had a positive onboarding experience. Onboarding applications or modules can aid in employee onboarding and new hire feedback collection. Often onboarding solutions and feedback-collecting features are now integrated with candidate management software or other types of hiring solutions.
Useful recruitment tools for enhancing the candidate experience
There are several tools available for recruiting teams and management to help optimize their hiring process, automate tedious tasks, track progress and finally, all these activities result in a better candidate experience.
Consider these useful tools and resources to create a better candidate experience.
Candidate Management System
A candidate management system is a software solution that aids in the recruiting process. A candidate management system is a software solution that aids in the recruiting process. Candidate management solutions may help companies recruit, communicate with, and manage candidates throughout the employment process. They can assist HR professionals and recruiting managers in improving hiring practices and candidate experience and keeping data more structured and organized.
An applicant tracking system (ATS)
An applicant tracking system (ATS) enables you to manage the whole hiring process from one location, streamlining all procedures for both you and your prospects. Make sure that the applicant tracking system (ATS) your organization use is preferably customizable and responsive so that all candidates may apply through it.
Candidate assessment software
There are several tools available that can be utilized to evaluate candidates’ skill levels throughout the hiring process. Multiple-choice questions, hypothetical situations, tests of language proficiency, and/or fundamental mathematical concepts are all possible through these solutions.
Organizations can create these evaluations themselves and customize them according to their need. However, recruiting team can also utilize a lot of third-party applications. In either case, using this type of assessment may greatly speed up the screening process and eliminate human bias. So, these will create a fair, transparent, and efficient screening and evaluation process for applicants, elevating the candidate experience.
Hiring chatbots
You may communicate with candidates on a large scale and automate some of the screening with the use of recruitment chatbots. The amazing thing about recruiting chatbots is that they can assist candidates in the application process round-the-clock, even when you’re not online, by responding to their inquiries.
You may set up chatbots to respond to inquiries from candidates about your business and certain opportunities using various technologies. You can also use your chatbot to screen candidates by sending them questions straight away when they submit an application. Recruiters can then receive a notification from the chatbot to contact qualified applicants.
Virtual assistants for recruiting
It’s reasonable to say that any hiring manager or recruiter would like to have an assistant.
This is where tools like the Virtual Recruitment Assistant (VRA) are important. A VRA employs automation and artificial intelligence to personalize and enhance candidate interactions and save recruiting time. For instance, the VRA can use a scheduling tool to recommend times for in-person interviews and remind recruiters to provide candidates with status updates. A referral feature that connects individuals to vacancies can potentially be part of a VRA. Onboarding can also use VRA to make new hires’ initial days easy and more comfortable.
feedback collecting systems
Most recruiting solutions like candidate management software or ATSes now include feedback collection features for users. Additionally, one can utilize a variety of paid and free survey platforms on the market to gather candidate feedback. Consider the requirements for your organization and particular survey before you begin evaluating technologies and tools.
Send your survey to every applicant throughout the process, including those you reject, those who decline your job offer, and those who accept an offer from the organization, in order to collect a large volume of information. To receive honest feedback and make sure candidates feel comfortable giving their opinions, the surveys should ideally be anonymous. You can also include the survey at each stage of the recruiting process to boost response rates.
Wrap Up
Furthermore, there are social listening tools, and video conferencing applications that are available separately or with recruiting solutions. Many ATSes, or candidate management software, even help to manage job requisitions or edit job postings. So, there are multiple tools and technologies available, and solutions are becoming smarter and more comprehensive each day by integrating new techniques and features. Also, recruiting practices are becoming more candidate-friendly and efficient. But it is the people who make the real difference in candidate experience. Not only the recruiting team but all individuals who interact with candidates in some form contribute in creating positive or negative candidate experience.