Candidate Experience: Why it’s Important and How to Improve it in Your Organization

What should be on the minds of leaders and decision-makers who are looking to find and retain top talent at their organizations?  

Candidate experience.  

In fact, improving the candidate experience is essential for staying competitive in your industry, especially as the Great Recession continues into the new year.  

Candidate experience refers to the overall experience with a company they are interested in working for. It includes all stages of hiring, from the time they first apply for a job, through the onboarding process after they’re hired. Their experience, from the first touchpoint to when they’re finished with the onboarding process, has a significant impact on how they perceive the organization and can directly impact how their sphere of influence perceives the organization as well.  

Candidate Experience

As mentioned above, candidates who’ve had a good experience will share their impression of your company. This is true even for candidates you may pass up for a role. No matter what, word of mouth, whether positive or negative, will travel fast in your industry.  

Loop Works’ recruitment solutions help enable the candidate experience by maximizing the power of mobile, which meets candidates on platforms they’re already using and creates more efficient, time-sensitive conversations. Here’s a deeper look at how these tools can help your organization create a better candidate experience.  

Meeting Candidates Where They Are  

The consistent rise in mobile technology sets candidates’ expectations to a more personalized yet optimized experience across multiple platforms.  

People are five times more likely to read and respond to text messages than emails. For this reason, text messaging is a more direct route to candidates because recipients are notified of important messages instantly. This increases the chance that your messages will be read as texts over emails. Think about it: generally, people have to set aside a few minutes to check their emails, but texts are likely to be opened as soon as a recipient receives a notification. Furthermore, emails can get sent to spam folders or become buried in a slew of other emails and don’t get opened.  

Increase Use of Preferred Communication Platforms  

Candidates and employees depend on mobile devices to do just about anything and everything. Mobile technology can reduce the hiring timeline in reaching and hiring candidates, making recruitment more engaging. Unfortunately, many organizations have been slow to change and implement a mobile strategy.  

The current reality is that many companies are still not meeting candidates’ expectations. 

Create Timely Communication with Automated Messages 

Candidates will appreciate clear, direct communication from your organization that’s delivered on time. Hiring teams can optimize candidate experience by using a solution to send automated messages to candidates with key dates like application status updates, interview reminders and onboarding deadlines.  

Using automated text messaging software, your team can send out automated reminders related to time-sensitive information making communicating any last-minute details to the candidate easier and more efficient. This also alleviates the stress from your hiring teams if they’re scrambling and hoping candidates are checking email messages on time.  

Text messaging is also a helpful tool from the candidate side, as it allows them the ability to contact your hiring team in the event if they’re running late or need to reschedule for an interview or other important meeting.  

If you’re interested in learning more about improving the candidate experience at your organization, reach out to our team to start a conversation. We can’t wait to solve your hiring challenges and help you maintain meaningful connections with your candidates and employees! 

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