cultivate a memorable candidate experience and retain employees
cultivate a memorable candidate experience and retain employees

Cultivating a Memorable Candidate Experience to Win the Right Hires

Candidate experience is one of the most critical influences in successfully taking top talent from application to offer. With endless employment opportunities available to those seeking the right work fit, the experience you create and the impression you make during the first few interactions with a candidate are exceedingly important. Here are steps to cultivate a memorable candidate experience and ensure your top candidates become your top employees.

recruit and retain top employees

Create a Seamless, User-Friendly Application Process

The best way to accomplish this is to utilize intuitive employee recruitment and application platforms that eliminate candidate effort and keep your talent acquisition team well-informed of both inbound and outbound recruiting activity every step of the way.

Develop Comprehensive and Transparent Job Description Postings

  • Use industry and specialty-specific terms when referencing the skills you are seeking.

  • The desire is in the details. Be sure to include the information that matters to applicants, such as salary range, career growth capability, benefits, and PTO packages.

  • Make sure the introduction of your posting packs the most punch. Most candidates likely won’t even make it to the final third of your posting’s information, so it’s important to share the roles’ most exciting draws right at the start.

Provide Candidates With Frequent Status Updates

LinkedIn reports, “81% of candidates [felt] that employers who continuously communicate the status updates improve the candidate experience.” Whenever possible, add value to your touchpoints by ditching the automated email and making an individualized connection with your candidate to personalize and add value to the experience.

employees embracing company culture

Show Off Your Company Culture

Make sure you create opportunities for applicants to learn more about who you are as an organization by implementing practices such as:

  • Using language in job postings that is not only culture-centric but indicative of your unique environment and values.

  • Include links to company culture-focused content on your website or social media accounts in all communications.

  • Speak to your company culture highlights during each touchpoint and be sure to comment on how the candidate’s specific skillset and values are reflected in your work environment.

Actively Seek Candidate Feedback

The best way to determine how applicants receive your customer experience efforts is to ask them directly. Obtain priceless data to help exponentially improve your recruitment efforts by inquiring about opportunities to:

  • Eliminate candidate effort

  • Create more personalization

  • Share better information during each stage of the recruitment process

  • Create an overall more positively impactful experience

Incorporate a Diverse Recruitment Firm

Don’t forget, bad experiences speak volumes not just to your candidates but also to their entire network, who may now be privy to the poor experience. The good news is that because a quality talent acquisition process involves many candidate touchpoints, you have just as many opportunities to create a positive candidate experience when executed correctly.

Best-in-class talent acquisition takes mountains of time and effort. It requires highly knowledgeable team members with an expert understanding of the current market, top sourcing strategies, company culture, branding and representation, recruitment marketing, and so on. Work with our talent acquisition experts to optimize your candidate experience and your entire recruitment operation. Start hiring candidates with the skillsets to accelerate operational success.