Candidate Experience and Employer Brand: An Intricate Line

Similar to consumer branding,employer branding is emerging as a major focus for CHROs. Here's how a better employer brand creates a better applicant experience and easier hiring.

Being a CHRO in a multinational is not unlike walking a tightrope, and the weights on either side are rarely at equilibrium. People practice leaders today sport many a scar from the war of talent frontlines, but if there were a common ground that they all met upon today, it would probably be the pivotal factor of employer branding and experiential recruitment practices in modern HCM. And for good reason, too – from the a recent award committee on candidate experience that surveyed more than 45,000 candidates about their own experience shed some surprising, albeit logical, insights. It was seen that candidates reporting a positive experience, 61 percent would definitely encourage their peers to apply to the company, while 27 percent of those having a negative one would strongly discourage their peers from applying.

40 percent of the candidates with a positive experience have even expressed their willingness to purchase/opt for more of the services or goods

More astonishingly, about 40 percent of the candidates with a positive experience have even expressed their willingness to purchase/opt for more of the services or goods the organizations provide/sell, even if they failed to clear the interviews. On the other hand, 30 percent of those with a negative experience would opt for/buy minimum services/goods. In fact, 50 percent of people with a positive experience went a step ahead to share their positive experience. And charting the same route, 32 percent of people with a negative one broadcast all their bad news.

Every business worth its salt knows that a positive candidate experience works as a brilliant marketing tool for promoting its employer brand, while a bad one takes a ‘deadly’ toll on it. Disastrous as that is, the fact is even more shocking: a bad candidate experience may lead the right candidate to refuse a job offer. In other words, the top talent may not show any interest in getting associated with an organization who pays little heed to its recruitment process.

Proven tips for creating a stand-out candidate experience

How to create a stand-out candidate experience? Top priority should be that all job candidates—no matter whether they’re successful or not—should come away with the similar positive impression of your company so that they stay as a potential buyer in the future. How can it be done? The following are a few important considerations:

Stay authentic: Build your internal perception and thereafter, go and communicate the appropriate message. If you do not devote your time to gain more insights into your internal culture, it’ll then become futile trying to align it to your employer brand message. And perhaps that’s why, even if you’re able to draw the best-of-breed talent, you may not get them to stay in your organization for long.

Gain first-hand experience: Go for a rigorous audit of candidate experience and then, map all of the possible touch points with candidates—both online and offline. This comprises gaining an idea of the career site and the entire application process both from all mobile devices as well as a desktop.

Stay consistent: Ensure the experience you have created is continuously reinforced at every step of the talent acquisition process. The values created during the attraction phase should be reiterated during the interview as well as onboarding phases.

Prioritize training: No matter whether it is your talent acquisition specialist or recruitment manager, always ensure whoever connects with candidates must have a clear understanding of organizational values and the positions offered. And most importantly, they should work towards creating a positive experience, at every step, for the prospective talent.

Strike a clear communication: Candidates persistently complain that they are kept in dark about the entire recruiting process. To ensure a positive candidate experience, always be clear about the entire process, decision-making, and what candidates can anticipate in a notification.

Start taking feedback: As revealed by the Talent Board, 75% of organizations don’t even survey their candidates to get feedback about their experience during the screening and interview phases. This is a significant missed opportunity to know from talent if the organization is doing a great job in building a positive candidate experience.

With the competition for talent intensifying across the world, an organization should better position themselves to emerge as the ‘employer of choice’. There’s no greater way to do this than to build a positive candidate experience that not only new hires but also unsuccessful candidates can share with their peers and friends. Further, being an important cog in all employer branding exercises, creating a positive candidate experience will work as a foundation for a lasting candidate relationship.