The goal of any organization must include the recruitment of top-tier talent. However, finding this great talent isn’t just about filling jobs—it’s also about creating positive relationships. In other words, understanding why the candidate’s experience is important to the overall process is vital.
Thankfully, the following information will tell you everything you need to know as a business owner when it comes to better recruitment conversations and creating the ideal candidate experience:
What is the “Candidate Experience”?
Before looking deeper into how to facilitate better relationships and conversations with top talent, it’s important to first understand what the term candidate experience means. The candidate experience refers to the overall perception and emotions that jobseekers experience during recruitment.
It is advantageous for you as a company to provide a good candidate experience as this will strengthen your reputation as a brand and increase the likelihood of the candidate in question accepting the job they are offered. On the other hand, negative experiences concerning candidate experience can damage your organization’s reputation and even discourage top talent from applying again.
Why is The Candidate’s Experience Important?
Obviously, you want to give your brand an edge over competitors in virtually all avenues. Creating a positive recruitment process and enhancing conversations is no exception. The following are reasons that you should make the candidate experience a must for your business going forward:
Attracts Top Talent: Top talent will often know what they have is valuable. Therefore, you need to make sure they are treated as valued. This will in turn attract even more top talent.
Improves Employer Brand: If you attract more skilled talent for positions, your brand overall will improve.
Reduces Turnover: Turnover is a costly aspect of running a business. Thankfully, improving candidate experience within the recruitment process can even reduce turnover.
Increases Productivity: In regard to the job of course, but also in making the recruitment process more efficient.
Enhances the Candidate's Perception of Your Company: You always want to make a good initial impression on any potential new employee. Thankfully, by focusing on recruitment conversations and a better overall recruitment experience, you can simultaneously boost your brand’s appeal in the eyes of the candidates vying for the job.
Tips For Better Recruitment Conversations
Now, we come to the nuts and bolts of the process. How to actually create better conversations with talent throughout the recruitment process. The following is a compilation of some of the most applicable ways to promote better conversations and create a better recruiting experience overall:
Actively Listen
When you actively listen, you show genuine interest in the candidate’s experience and goals by paying attention to their responses. This means instead of listening just to respond yourself, you are genuinely listening to the candidate’s thoughts and trying to get to know more about them through their responses. This includes asking follow-up questions as well to clarify points and help connect the dots. Generally, this will mean listening 70% of the time and speaking around 30%.
Be Clear and Transparent
There is nothing more frustrating for a job candidate than to ask a question and get an ambiguous answer that really does nothing to clear up the matter. Instead, provide clear information about the job requirements, company culture, and the entire recruitment process. Be honest about challenges and obstacles relating to the job as well. Trying to sugarcoat the position might work in the short term, but it will result in a candidate feeling somewhat hoodwinked when they are hired and working in the position only to find that they have been misled about their duties or the expectations of the job.
Ask Open-Ended Questions
When creating questions for a candidate, try to avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no. Instead, opt for more open-ended questions as this will allow the candidate to open up more and give you more information about them as a person and as a candidate for the job. Questions like “what made you apply to this job?” or “tell me something about yourself that’s not on your resume” are good examples.
Provide Context
It is your job as a recruiter to properly describe your company’s mission, values, and goals. You should also discuss the role a candidate is in line for and explain how their role will impact the organization and themselves as a candidate over time. Provide the candidate with the context they need to completely understand their position and what’s expected of them within the organization.
Make the Conversation More Personal
During the recruitment process, it’s immensely important that you help a candidate feel as if they are more than just a number. They are instead a person with feelings and emotions. One way to convey this is to address the candidate by name and use personal anecdotes to prove that to your company, they are more than just one of several candidates who are being interviewed for a position.
Give Feedback
Throughout the recruitment process, it is helpful to give constructive feedback, positively, to help candidates understand their strengths and weaknesses. To ensure that candidates don’t feel attacked, make sure that you avoid opinions and stick to facts and ensure that you give feedback at the right time and with the right emotion behind it, meaning it never should feel like an attack.
Respect The Candidate’s Time
This is a biggy. Make sure that you always— to the best of your ability— stay within the agreed-upon time frame for the conversation you are having. Be mindful that the candidate has other responsibilities and might not have unlimited time to wait on you if you are delayed. Always be mindful of a candidate’s schedule as you would expect them to be mindful of your own.
Bottom Line: Conversations Are Important for Better Recruitment
By providing a positive candidate experience, you can improve your organization’s reputation, attract top talent and increase employee satisfaction and productivity. Contact us at TPC, where we are More Than Payroll, today to learn more about how to create better conversations throughout the recruitment process.
