Candidate Experience: Measure your candidates’ applicant experiences with surveys

In this blog article, the HR experts at QuestionPro explain to you why it is extremely important to deal with the topic of candidate experience, to measure it and why this topic is fundamentally so important for the success of your company. You will also learn how to implement a candidate experience survey, including sample questions.

Candidate experience is an important part of the employee journey

In today's working world, more and more emphasis is placed on ensuring that employees have as many positive experiences as possible along the employee journey. However, this does not only apply when you join the company. The candidate experience now also plays a major role in the concept of employee experience. In an effort to be competitive, companies are looking for ways and solutions to empower employees to be independent, to involve them in decisions, to challenge them and to develop them independently. Promoting interpersonal trust in their teams and generally setting everyone up for success should also be an important concern for all HR managers.

At the same time, the boundaries of the employee experience are being questioned and the data silos between the candidate experience, employee experience and alumni experience are being broken down. Companies that want to remain competitive look at the entire spectrum. And that starts with the topic of candidate experience.

The topic of candidate experience is coming more and more into focus

It's about more than just realizing that a positive candidate experience leads to better quality in the recruiting process. It's also about recognizing that a good start when joining the company promotes the commitment and loyalty of new employees. Companies are therefore increasingly realizing that it is important to focus on the topic of candidate experience. And this applies to all candidates without exception,

• who are offered a job and do not accept it
• which are sorted out in the first step
• who do not receive an offer after being selected for an interview
• who are put on a waiting list because they might still be a good fit, but for a different position

The topic of candidate experience simply covers all applicants, regardless of whether they ultimately join the company or not, for whatever reason!

What exactly is meant by candidate experience?

Candidate experience is subject to subjective evaluation. Do candidates have good or bad candidate experiences? Ask HR managers at any company and they will say that they strive to provide applicants with the most positive candidate experience possible. However, only a few prove this based on collected data, for example through surveys on candidate experience. Measuring candidate experience is of utmost importance.

If you ask people applying for a job, they will say that their candidate experience at most companies has been neutral at best. Some worrying trends even suggest that, on average, the candidate experience is getting worse every year. Why is that?

The topic of candidate experience is still too often neglected

The subjective evaluation by applicants is not at the top of the priority list for HR managers when designing their application processes. And they don’t measure applicant experiences either. Rather, they simply think about filling positions as quickly and cost-effectively as possible. Measuring the candidate experience through surveys takes a back seat. So HR managers design processes aimed at achieving the result as efficiently as possible: posting job advertisements, receiving applications with the details they need to evaluate a person, selection, interviews, first offer, negotiation. If the result doesn't meet expectations, it's easy to point to a possible lack of quality in the application process: we need to write better job ads, we need to make sure we place these ads on more platforms so that more people see them.

The topic of candidate experience plays a rather unimportant role here. Focusing on candidate experience is a precursor to improved hiring, whether we're talking about quantity or quality. And more broadly, this can even impact future business development.

The most important reasons why the topic of candidate experience is of great importance

Access to a larger pool of candidates

If you are perceived as a good employer, more people will apply to you. Sometimes you don't know an employee well enough to ask them, but maybe they know someone who has applied to you. Not to mention, these days information is available on sites like Glassdoor or other review portals that provide a detailed overview of the candidate experience. If this information is unfavorable, potential employees will think twice about applying at all. And any talent that doesn't apply is a lost talent.

Hiring the best and brightest minds

The most desirable applicants can afford to be selective. Highly qualified candidates recognize during the candidate experience whether your company can be an important career step for them. If you are not convinced by your company, you will quickly look for alternatives. Even before there is any contact between an applicant and your company, the candidates obtain information about your company from the relevant evaluation portals. And what candidate experience other applicants have already had. In addition, talents within an industry often know each other and talk in advance about the respective candidate experience. Anyone who really wants to hire the best and brightest minds now realizes how enormously important the topic of candidate experience actually is.

A good candidate experience retains talent

A consistently positive employee journey, from recruitment to leaving the company, ensures satisfied employees. Satisfied employees usually stay with a company for a longer period of time, perform better and show higher commitment and loyalty. Therefore, care should be taken to ensure the candidate experience is as positive as possible during the recruiting phase, as this period is a critical success factor. If candidates go through a positive application process, they will be motivated to work right from the start of their new job. New employees carry the positive candidate experience with them and have a fundamentally more positive feeling towards the employer.

Lower turnover in the first year

Increased first-year turnover is a particularly alarming trend in certain industries characterized by high job supply and low talent supply, such as: B. the technology industry. Employees can not only afford to be picky, but also to change their minds. Sometimes applicants accept a position even though they already had a negative candidate experience during the application process. And if they then have further negative experiences during training, they will leave the company during the probationary period.

Candidate Experience: Always make your candidate feel welcome and always make the interview positive.

Measure the candidate experience regularly with surveys

The best way to measure candidate experience during the application process is to ask candidates what their experience was like immediately after each key touchpoint. The most important thing is to ensure that the questions asked are relevant, actionable, and that they are asked of all candidates. QuestionPro's Employee Experience Management platform can ensure questions are sent to all candidates after every touchpoint, including reminders, so data is continuously collected and dashboards with key metrics are available in real time. This means you always have an up-to-date overview of the candidate experience in real time.

Key characteristics of candidate experience surveys

A candidate experience survey is essentially a survey of applicants that takes place during or after recruitment. It is usually carried out by HR managers in order to sustainably improve and optimize the application process and thus the applicant experience. Measuring candidate experience through candidate experience surveys allows companies to collect valuable feedback, identify blind spots in the application process, and increase hiring and retention rates.

Candidate experience surveys offer high optimization potential

In today's highly opinionated and communicative world, candidate experience surveys are probably the best approach to gathering such valuable information. The questions should be designed in such a way that applicants feel directly addressed about what they really think of the recruitment process, and ideally anonymously and unfiltered. For this reason, the Candidate Experience Survey provides you with honest and accurate information so that you can ultimately optimize the applicant experience as best as possible.

Importance of Candidate Experience Surveys

According to a Career Arc survey, nearly 60% of applicants have had a bad experience with their application. And what's even worse: 72% of them have shared these negative experiences with someone, in person or on the relevant review portals. The same survey found that applicants spend an average of 3 to 4 hours preparing and submitting information, while hiring managers spend less than 15 minutes reviewing documents.

Sample candidate experience survey questions

To maintain candidate engagement, only ask questions that are most relevant to your talent acquisition goals.

For the following example questions, the answer options should be “strongly agree”, “somewhat agree”, “somewhat disagree” and “strongly disagree”.

• The application allowed me to demonstrate my suitability for the position.
• I found the online application process to be very easy.
• The HR manager answered all my questions.
• The human resources manager informed me about the next steps.
• The HR manager answered my questions promptly.
• Overall, I am satisfied with the application process.
• I would recommend [your company].
• The application process met my expectations.

What are the most important touchpoints when conducting a candidate experience survey?

Every interaction that applicants have with your company during the application process is a touchpoint, also known as a contact point. Depending on the role, department and type of interaction with candidates, these can be:

• Submission of CV
• Conversation with the HR manager
• Follow-up by the HR department
• job interview
• Conversation with colleagues
• first offer
• negotiation etc.

Each of these touchpoints is important. You can measure importance by counting the percentage of candidates who voluntarily abandon the application process between rounds. By measuring the candidate experience through surveys at each touchpoint, companies can assess how candidate expectations and experiences change over time. Using the data obtained, application processes can be adjusted with a focus on the topic of applicant experience. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that you regularly measure the candidate experience.

The online interview or online assessment are important touchpoints within the application process. You should then ask your candidates about their applicant experience with a survey to measure the degree of positive experience.

1:1 live online presentation:
Candidate Experience: We show you how to measure applicant experiences easily and efficiently

Our HR experts will be happy to provide you with a consultation on the topic of candidate experience and the measurability of application experiences at an appointment of your choice. Arrange an individual appointment.

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KEYWORDS OF THIS BLOG POST

Candidate experience | Applicant experience | Measurability | importance | design