Candidate experience evolves to engender more emotional engagement

At a time of ongoing skills and talent shortages across most areas of the economy, the idea of wooing prospective employees with a compelling candidate experience is garnering increased attention.

Whereas it used to be considered a “nice-to-have” that was explored after other elements of the recruitment process had been dealt with, “intense competition has led to a renewed focus” here over the past year or so, says Jamie Kohn, a research director at Gartner’s HR practice.

This is not least because “when people are receiving multiple job offers, they don’t have the patience for long, drawn-out application processes, which is leading to a lot of effort in terms of creating an effortless experience”, she adds.

Also, it is starting to dawn on more hiring managers and business leaders that recruitment is a two-way process, which involves understanding what job applicants need, what engages them and what information they require to help them make the right decision.

As to what an effortless candidate experience looks like in practice, Kohn believes it consists of three key elements. The first is based around process-based activities, such as making jobs easy to apply for and providing applicants with frequent updates and insights into different stages of the hiring process. A key aim here is to streamline such processes to speed them up.

The second element is about understanding the candidate journey and what information and support are required during different moments that matter. These include the application process, interviews and offer stages.

Both of these elements are what Kohn describes as the “low-hanging fruit” of candidate experience and where the majority of employers are currently focusing – although “they don’t always do super well at it”, she adds.

A work in progress

The third area is “still a work in progress”, however, and is where organisations still tend to struggle most. It entails “engaging candidates on a more emotional level to build connection with the organisation and see if it feels like the right fit”, says Kohn.

It is this connection, based on whether applicants can identify with the company’s values and are likely to find the work they will do meaningful, that differentiates one employer from another.

But to build it involves viewing the candidate experience as part of the organisation’s wider employer branding activities. It also means understanding that everything that happens during the hiring process affects the company’s brand reputation.

Kohn explains: “So, for example, if you’re trying to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in your branding, candidates should feel that and see those values throughout the experience. Everything has to be consistent and make a strong connection to who you are, so it’s about rethinking how you provide a view into the organisation.”

One way of doing this is to connect job applicants with existing employees and managers early in the hiring process to provide them with a “voice of experience” that is more likely to be trusted than that of recruiters. Another is to be upfront and transparent about issues ranging from pay to flexible working.

Candidate relationship management systems

As for the technology side of things, it has a significant role to play here, especially in the process and candidate journey elements of the triangle. Over the last few years, for instance, vendors have been citing double-digit growth in candidate relationship management systems, says Betsy Summers, principal analyst on Forrester Research’s Future of Work team. Key suppliers in this space include Beamery, iCIMS and Phenom People.

The software, which has been around for about a decade but is not yet widely adopted, is a point solution that integrates or comes bundled with applicant tracking systems, which are now commodity products.

The first wave of candidate relationship management technology performs a similar function to “marketing engines”, says Summers. They enable recruiters to “foster talent pools, create campaigns and nurture them through scalable workflows so, for example, every rejected application gets a tailored, empathetic email response”.

They systems can also be used for sentiment analysis across social media channels and to understand where candidates are dropping out of the process so that action can be taken.

“It’s very analogous to marketing,” says Summers. “Imagine how inefficient and inconsistent it would be if marketing had no technology to manage their campaigns or social media strategy – it would take so much time it would be impossible, so candidate relationship management can help in the same way from a recruiting angle.”

As a result, interest has been particularly keen in sectors experiencing tight talent markets, such as high tech and financial and professional services. It is also buoyant in those where staff turnover is high, such as manufacturing, transport and the supply chain. Employers eager to be associated with a positive employee experience also tend to be keen.

The next generation coming down the line, meanwhile, consist of artificial intelligence (AI)-based skills ontology systems, which can infer an individual’s skills based on their experience and match them to available job opportunities. They also help to identify top candidates that it may make sense to build relationships with.

But Summers adds: “These tools are still mostly in development, but there is a lot of scepticism and fear of employing them for a recruiting use case. Stories such as gender bias in Amazon’s recruitment system a few years ago have stuck in people’s heads.”

Although she acknowledges that, if used effectively, AI can help mitigate affinity bias, a key problem is that “most organisations are still grappling with how to implement AI in an ethical way” and “people are afraid of losing control over the process”.

But even if they are using less controversial technology, it appears that most employers still have a long way to go to create a truly compelling candidate experience.

Kohn concludes: “I don’t know of any organisation that has completely figured out candidate experience, and some of that is because candidate expectations continue to evolve. But many organisations are still not even covering the basics – even if they might think they are.”