Why Candidate Experience is more important than Customer Experience?

Most people we talk to say the customer experience is the most important, and while we agree that customer experience is important, the candidate experience is even MORE important.

If you are not treating candidates to an A+ candidate experience your competition will.

The old-school way of recruiting is frustrating the hell out of the people you are trying to hire.

People born between 1980 and 2000 — are getting frustrated by the old system, according to the BBC.

The talent you NEED to hire to keep your customer experience at peak levels is all employed. They aren’t looking at job ads or surfing your career site.

But if they were, how do you land them?

A survey by KPMG in which more than a third of the 400 respondents said they were annoyed by the length of the application process.

Even worse, more than half said they hated not getting any feedback if they did not get the job.

So how long is your application process? Does every candidate get a response when they are declined for the job?

When was the last time you went through your recruiting process as if you were a candidate?

Have you taken the candidate’s journey through the application process, the interview gauntlet, and the feedback loop?

The answer is most likely NO!! Most hiring managers cannot be bothered with that and virtually ZERO Senior Executives have ever gone through this painful exercise.

If your application process requires a candidate to upload their resume and re-enter all the same information, you just failed the first step.

You lose about 50% if not more of the candidates interested in your position with this one misstep alone. Passive talent won’t tolerate it

However, if your application process passes muster and your interview process lasts longer than 2-3 weeks from start to finish, you just failed the test.

If you are serious about hiring All-Star talent, your interview process should last no more than 2 weeks. Ten days are ideal.

Too many companies are stuck in their old process where a candidate has to go through 2 phone interviews, take a personality test, wait a week so schedules can be coordinated, wait a week to get interview feedback, then the offer, if there is one, takes another 3 days to generate, then there is the back and forth salary negotiation, then if the offer is accepted and the candidate is employed they need to put in their 2 weeks notice

…..and fend off all counteroffer attempts.

Now, do you see why I call it the gauntlet?

But there is a better way.

Pro Tip 1: If your application process is longer than someone being able to attach his or her resume or Linkedin profile with his or her name phone number and email address your application process is killing you.

I can hear you now…..”You don’t know what the hell you are talking about! We get a ton of candidate flow from our job ads.”

If that’s what you think, please smack yourself now because candidate flow doesn’t mean anything. Don’t EVER utter that phases again, it’s useless.

Would you rather have 150 mediocre candidates who are unemployed or change jobs every 8-16 months, or do you want 4 candidates who are spot on, employed, have a killer job history, and see something in your opportunity that makes them take notice?

Don’t bother answering; I already know what your answer is. The moral of the story is to make the first step in your process as easy as first name, last name, email, and phone number, attach your resume.

Pro Tip 2: Make it a point to review and respond to every resume within 48-72 hours. And for god’s sake, if they are not fit please tell them. Don’t leave people hanging. By the way, this can be automated.

Pro Tip 3: If your candidate is local, skip the phone interview and bring them in right away, within 72 hours. If they are an All-Star, they will have options and you need to strike while the iron is HOT. When you do this, make sure all of the stakeholders participate in the interview so there is no need for a follow-up interview.

Pro Tip 4: Immediately after the interview ends have a meeting to discuss the interview and review the scorecard each stakeholder filled out for that candidate.

You did use a score carding system for your interview, didn’t you?

If the candidate will not move forward, you should send out an email right away letting them know.

Pro Tip 5: If a second in-house interview is needed….which btw, I think is a bad idea because there is no reason you couldn’t have accomplished everything on the first interview, but I digress.

However, if a second interview is necessary, this should be scheduled ASAP, preferably the same week, so all of the information on both sides remains fresh.

Pro Tip 6: If you will be making an offer, I hope you have been pre-closing the candidate the whole way through, and both sides have been transparent on the compensation as to eliminate any back and forth during this stage.

It is always a best practice to let the candidate know you will be making your best offer with your first offer to streamline the process and eliminate any of the uncomfortable back-and-forth negotiations.

Always, Always, Always come strong with your best offer right out of the gate. If you are making them an offer, they must be an All-Star, right? So roll out an All-Star offer.

Don’t play games….

Pro Tip 7: Require an answer on your offer within 72 hours. By now they have had time to think about it.

Pro Tip 8: As soon as the signed offer is received, the process should be handed over to the person who will be managing this person. Do not leave the onboarding process to anyone else other than the hiring manager.

The day the signed offer is received, the hiring manager should call the candidate and welcome them to the team, answer any questions, and tell them what their first 90 days will look like. You might even want to share some project details with them.

But it doesn’t stop there. Remember, if this person is an All-Star, they will be faced with a counteroffer. It is your job to bring them into your environment and create a bond so tight that no counteroffer can entice them to stay.

We recommend to our clients that within the first week after signing the offer, the hiring manager should take the candidate and their spouse to a nice dinner or invite the candidates to lunch with a couple of key people from the team. This, again, tightens the new bond.

All in all if your candidate experience is flawless and easy, you have a much high chance of landing All-Stars, but if you falter on any of these steps you risk never seeing an All-Star enter your process or even worse, they accept a counteroffer at the 11th hour.

Neither one of those scenarios is ideal so it is critical that you know what the application, interview, follow-up, offer, and onboarding process looks like so you can optimize any flaws.

If you bypass this exercise you run the risk of a potential mis-hire or just never seeing an All-Star enter your process. Either way, both can have a negative effect on your leadership career.