SmartRecruiters Blog

Candidate Experience: Facts & Data You Can’t Ignore

In this recent Forbes article, Lian Shao, a lecturer at the University of Washington says that companies that don’t focus on improving their candidate experience can “end up harming their employer brand.”

Harm their employer brand? No question about it.

But the damage can be far more catastrophic. A poor candidate experience hurts an organization’s entire brand. After all, candidates are customers too. They won’t be shy about telling their friends and family about how they’re treated, maybe even spreading the word across social media.

What’s the potential damage? What are candidates saying today? Where can you pinpoint spots for measurable improvement? Join us July 20 for our webinar, “Candidate Experience: What the Evidence is Telling Us

Don’t miss this exceptional SmartRecruiters webinar where we’ll be joined by Gerry Crispin, an expert on the topic from the Association of Talent Acquisition Professionals, CareerXroads, and TalentBoard.

Turn anxiety into opportunity

Sometimes it seems as if recruiters have lost touch with how uncertainty in making career decisions leaves us all vulnerable to stress and anxiety.

This is a reminder that the candidate experience isn’t about you. It’s about the candidate. If I’m the candidate, it’s all about me.

Still, too many candidates report poor experiences, causing them to speak negatively about you. That hurts your chances of making excellent hires especially in a climate where the unemployment rate hovers near 16-year lows. During our webinar, we’ll show you just how damaging this can be.

The good news is that so many candidate experience issues are easily solved, so you can reduce all that anxiety and gain an advantage over your competition in hiring top talent — an enormous untapped opportunity at many companies.

See the data for yourself

I won’t reveal everything we’ll be discussing, but consider a few facts from recent studies:

  • Roughly 4 out of 10 job seekers who give their candidate experience a one-star rating will definitely take their alliances, product purchases, and relationships elsewhere. It’s impossible to know how much that loss of goodwill represents in lost opportunities
  • About 60 percent of candidate finalists report never being invited to provide feedback about their experience. Just listening can be so useful. Think about it. Would a company never consider asking customers for feedback? It’s just as important to ask candidates.
  • Approximately 57 percent of candidates who were informed that they were no longer being considered received that news in an email from a “do not reply” address. Whatever happened to common courtesy? That’s just plain common sense.

We’ll be presenting plenty of additional data and insights on where you can make improvements.

Benchmark your performance

During the webinar, you’ll learn about the TalentBoard’s latest benchmark study, which clearly shows how delivering an excellent candidate experience brings significant benefits.

You end up hiring only a tiny fraction of applicants. So give the vast majority of candidates who won’t be working for you (at least not immediately) a positive experience. Believe me, they’ll tell others about it, which really pays off over the long term.

There are certainly high costs associated with making poor hires — lost time, additional recruiting costs, and loss of goodwill. But the lost opportunities of not being able to attract top talent can be even more costly – yet so preventable.

Don’t miss this webinar July 20. We look forward to helping you see where to find significant opportunities to improve your candidate experience.

Nupur Vilas