The recipe for a great candidate experience

In this day and age where available talent is scarce, standing out from the crowd is no walk in the park. Especially in this time of the great resignation, and economic uncertainty, finding talent is highly competitive, with the power laying in the hands of candidates. One key way to ensure that your company is able to attract top talent is through providing a great candidate experience. 

It may seem easier said than done, but there are a few things that your team can do to get started that will help you make major strides, starting with adopting a structured approach to hiring. This can elevate your candidate experience by helping you set clear and transparent expectations, main strong, timely communication, and commit to continuous growth. Let’s dive into how to best bring these to life.

Organization and transparency

Candidates want to do their best – and you want them to do their best too. Interviews are already nerve-wracking enough. Ensure a fair process with clear interview plans and questions decided upon ahead of time after aligning with the hiring manager on the needs of the role. Questions should be different for each stage of the interview so that candidates don’t have to repeat themselves over and over again. Make them clear, engaging, exciting, and challenging, but make them purposeful.

Then, create a diverse interview panel with the right people for each stage of the interview. Once you’ve done this, you can let the candidates know who they’ll be meeting with, what the focus of the conversation will be, and share any resources that might be helpful.

Timely communication

How fast are you responding to candidates? Spoiler alert: It makes all the difference. Greenhouse user data shows that candidates crave fast response rates from recruiters and expect to hear back from companies in one week or less regarding their initial application. Keep candidates informed throughout the process with updates on where they stand and when they can expect to hear about next steps. 

When you are communicating with them, always share actionable feedback Candidates today looking for meaningful interactions and useful feedback from recruiters. They’ve indicated that even if they did not receive a job offer, receiving feedback would make them more inclined to apply to future jobs at that company.

Continual improvement

Soliciting feedback from candidates at the conclusion of their candidacy is an important lever in continually improving your process. No candidate experience is perfect, but when you have both data and actionable insights, you can make adjustments that keep you moving in the right direction. Build and share a candidate survey after every interview to collect this crucial feedback.

Greenhouse is a great tool to leverage in developing a structured hiring process to wow your candidates and secure top talent. If you're interested in learning more about structured hiring and how to uplevel your candidate experience with Greenhouse you can learn more here.