16 ways to amaze your candidates when hiring

We are always looking at recruitment from a business point of view: what’s the best way to attract candidates? How can we make our process faster and more effective? What can we do to make interviewing easier for our Line Managers?

But what about the candidate? Why aren't we striving to amaze them?

Let’s begin with some recruitment statistics from the candidates’ perspective:

27% of those who had a negative experience would actively discourage colleagues from applying

30% who had a negative experience in the recruitment process would buy less services or goods from that brand

32% of candidates broadcast their bad experience 

Reading these facts, I wonder to myself why people are having a negative experience in the first place?

Yes I get it, you have hundreds of CVs to screen, handfuls of interviews to conduct and negotiating wars to win but why should the candidates’ experience suffer?

Think about it, you spend all that time building and presenting a great employer brand and company culture and then it gets ruined in the next time of hire.

When hiring, your business is competing with some of the best in the industry. Delivering a great candidate experience will differentiate your business and help you stand out.

When designing your recruitment process you need to be candidate centric. Here are some tips on how to use technology to improve your communication with your candidates and making sure that their candidate experience is second to none.

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Videos

● ‘Meet the Interviewer’ - send the candidate a short video of the person they will be meeting at the interview. Not only is it a nice personal touch, it should also put the candidate at ease ready for the interview

● Use video’s to promote company culture. These can be embedded on job descriptions, career sites, social media platforms and Youtube. Get potential candidates excited before they’ve even applied! This will also allow candidates to assess themselves and see if they will be a good cultural fit

● Video messages from existing employees are becoming very popular. It gives potential candidates an opportunity to see what they can expect on a day to day basis from the team and will also demonstrate the type of characters the business hires

● Alter an initial conversation with the candidate in respect to interview feedback, send it to them in video form too. This way the candidate can use it as a reference for improvement or a fond memory of progressing further

● You can also send a ‘welcome aboard’ video message once the candidate has accepted an offer. Get the whole team involved to ensure that the candidate feels welcome and starts without any hiccups!

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Mobile

● When the interview date is fast approaching, text your candidates the date and time of the interview. Not only does this add to the candidate’s experience, it should also reduce the number of ‘no shows’. Don’t forget to tell them how excited you are to see them!

● People have become accustomed to ‘instant everything’ – why should their interview feedback be any different? When they are on their way home  send them a text saying thank you for attending and a time frame of when you will be in touch with formal feedback

● Sending a picture of the office building is quirky, easy and will also be helpful

● If you are holding an assessment day, send them a text message with the schedule so they know what to expect and can prepare to the best of their ability. You should see an increase in interview quality

● Once a candidate has accepted an offer send them contact details of relevant line Managers and departments. This is a great way of opening up communication channels and making the candidate feel part of the team before they’ve even joined

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Social Media

● Create a talent community where potential employees and existing candidates can ask questions to ‘real’ employees at any stage of the recruiting process

● Display company culture, values, missions and your recruitment process online for people to check out before applying. This should improve the quality of applicants as people will be able to determine if they are a good fit with the information given

● Demonstrate employee engagement, professional development opportunities and wellness of your employees

● Once a candidate has accepted an offer, get your team to add the new employee to their network and send welcome messages

● This is a basic point but not many people do it – once a candidate has applied for a position, connect with them and stay in touch (even if they aren’t successful)

●  ‘Tweet’ them good luck on their first day on the new job – use a social media distributor such as Hootsuite to help organise and schedule posts

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As you can see, there are many ways you can give your candidates a great experience without having a large budget or a large HR team.

Technology has made many processes faster, more efficient and better – the recruitment process should be no different.

Wow your candidates by having a fun, personal and different recruitment process and you will not only attract rock star candidates but you will also boost your employer branding.

Hopefully the following statistics will inspire you to review your candidate’s experience and build an awesome, modern process:

40% of people who had a positive experience but not hired would buy more goods or services from that company

61% who had a positive experience would actively encourage colleagues to apply to the organization

 50% of candidates share their positive experience

**Statistics from: Candidate Experience Awards, surveyed over 45,000 job applicants

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