It’s well worth the time to focus on improving the overall experience for job candidates who apply to work for your company. Life can be so much easier for candidates and hiring managers alike, if you focus on ways to facilitate a positive recruiting, interviewing, and onboarding process.
If for no other reason, there’s evidence that about 60% of job applicants, who’ve had an unpleasant experience, would tell others not to apply for that position. So, you could miss out on good prospective employees if you develop a poor reputation for candidate experience. Fortunately, there are several ways to avoid this problem.
Best Ways to Improve Job Candidate Experience
- Make Job Applications “Mobile Friendly” - People do more of every online activity from their phones these days, including job applications. You don’t want to fall behind with this trend, so talk to your HR team about mobile-friendly elements such as text-message notifications and other mobile communication with applicants. This doesn’t totally supplant other methods, like e-mail communication, but your application must at least be accessible from Apple and Android smartphones.
- Don’t Keep the Same Verbiage for Every Job Post - We’ve seen lots of companies get lazy with job postings, where they’ll copy/paste the basic elements from one position, and apply them to every other one. Job posts should be specific to the actual position. You don’t want your post for “marketing director” to look identical to another one for “marketing copywriter.” That has a way of confusing and frustrating job candidates.
- Personalize Communication Whenever Possible - Yes, it’s hard to engage with every single job applicant you encounter, but there are ways to do this judiciously with the help of application software. If the application already gathers the candidate’s name, for example, then you can address them personally rather than sending generic, impersonal responses and instructions.
- Explain Your Job Application Process Early - Job applicants never enjoy “surprises” in the hiring process. While there’s nothing wrong with having candidates take a test or perform a practice exercise, be clear about it in the actual job advertisement. Don’t spring it on them after a second interview.
- Solicit & Implement Feedback from Candidates - This can be something as simple as having job candidates “rate” their application experience on a scale of one-to-five, combined with an opportunity to make comments. It’s a simple way to discern candidate experience, and decide whether to tweak the process for future candidates.
Those are five ways to make a potentially difficult job application process smoother for job candidates. Done well, it will make your business an even more attractive place for talented employees.
You can learn more about employee selection strategies by partnering with Florida Resource Management. Contact us anytime to ask about this topic, or anything else HR-related, by calling 941-343-6160.