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October 3, 2024 
7 min read
Measuring candidate experience can shed light on the triumphs and missteps of your talent acquisition strategies. How job seekers view and engage with your recruitment process is important, as their resulting behavior can dramatically impact your company’s reputation and ability to attract top talent.
It’s no secret that many candidates aren’t enjoying the current job market. One of our recent reports discovered that 43% of candidates found their last job search frustrating and long. Furthermore, 72% expect the recruitment process to take three weeks or less, a timeframe that many companies struggle to meet.
To improve the candidate experience, hiring teams need to first understand their talent pool’s expectations and perspectives. This means collecting firsthand data from them. Keep reading to learn which key metrics to track and gather, how technology can help, and best practices for creating a recruitment journey that measures up.
Poor candidate experience can have long-lasting, negative impacts on your business, including a shortage of potential hires, decreased employee referrals, and even reputational damage.
Hiring statistics show that 75% of job seekers wouldn’t accept a job offer if the company had a poor reputation, even if they were currently unemployed.
But the damage can extend beyond talent acquisition. iCIMS found that 56% of candidates would be less likely to be a consumer of a brand after a poor experience applying or interviewing for a job there.
Lowering time-to-hire and cost-per-hire rely on candidate satisfaction levels. Candidates who enjoy the recruitment process are more likely to accept job offers, reducing the mounting days and expenses associated with lengthy or restarted attempts to fill an open role.
Ultimately, creating a smooth recruitment that respects a candidate’s time and feelings can mitigate the likelihood of them exiting the hiring process or declining a job offer.
Unhappy candidates will opt out of working for you. If they experience a lack of communication, transparency, or respect for their time, it can considerably dampen their impression of the company.
A recent study found that 52% of candidates report declining a job offer due to a subpar hiring process. The cited reasons include a negative experience with interviewers (18%), disliked the work environment (16%), and thought the hiring process took too long (13%).
Assessing how candidates are thinking and feeling throughout the hiring journey can help curb these less favorable outcomes.
Gain valuable insights into your recruitment process by tracking and analyzing its success at every stage. Consider implementing the following key metrics to measure candidate experience.
Often used to gauge customer satisfaction, Net Promoter Score (NPS) has been adopted by recruiters in recent years. This metric measures the likelihood of candidates to recommend your company to others.
Candidates are asked to rate their experience on a scale of 0 to 10 using post-interview surveys. To calculate the NPS, the percentage of low ratings (detractors) are subtracted from the percentage of high ratings (promotors), giving you a final score.
A high NPS shows a positive candidate experience, while a low NPS indicates your recruitment processes may require fine-tuning.
The candidate satisfaction score (CSAT) measures your talent pool’s overall satisfaction with the hiring journey. Presented as a percentage, this metric is attained through candidate surveys, often completed at various stages in the recruitment process–for instance, after every interview with the hiring team.
Calculate your CSAT taking the sum of all positive responses and dividing it by the total responses collected, then multiplying this number by 100.
Application completion rate is the percentage of candidates who completed and submitted a job application after starting one. If the completion rate is low, it suggests your application process may be complicated, lengthy, or otherwise frustrating to undergo.
The time-to-apply metric measures how long it takes for a candidate to start, complete, and submit a job application. Keeping your application process short and sweet is generally preferred by job seekers. So, curbing this metric is effective for increasing your pool of applicants.
Offer acceptance rate calculates the percentage of candidates who accept a company’s job offers. This metric can provide insights into the hiring experience, as well as whether your salaries, health insurance, amount of PTO, and other benefits match industry standards.
Implementing recruiting software can help enhance the candidate experience. Tools for recruiters are available to engage candidates more effectively, decrease drop-off rates, and create a more inclusive hiring journey.
Recruitment solutions with intelligent sourcing functionality and cloud-based human capital management (HCM) are transforming the hiring process. Think less drop-off, more engagement, and happier candidates.
Powered by AI and machine learning, intelligent sourcing can accelerate how you identify and engage with top talent. These tools analyze vast amounts of data from resumes, social profiles, and other sources to generate a shortlist of qualified candidates that align with the role and company culture.
Cloud-based HCM systems manage the full candidate lifecycle by integrating various HR functions. iCIMS Talent Cloud, for instance, supports personalized communication, candidate relationship management, and applicant tracking to help create an engaging and efficient application process.
Adopting recruiting software that supports diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) can also have a positive impact on talent acquisition. Solutions like iCIMS ATS can help to build a more inclusive and diverse candidate pool, upholding fair hiring practices with tools that measure, enhance, and champion DEI impact.
Gartner found that 70% of BIPOC candidates reported not finishing a job application after determining their preferences didn’t align to the role, compared to 60% of white Americans. Their research also showed that 74% of LGBTQ+ job seekers opted not to apply for a role, believing they didn’t meet the listed requirements. (Only 62% of heterosexual candidates reported the same concern.)
Based on these findings, focused effort is needed to reach and engage job seekers from these historically excluded groups.
Applying for a job at your company should be hassle-free. Simplify your application process by minimizing the number of steps and offering a user-friendly interface on your careers page.
Creating a streamlined experience can reduce applicant frustration and increase application rates. To achieve this, try putting yourself in a candidate’s shoes and fill in one of your own job applications. Time how long it takes to complete and ask yourself the following questions:
Don’t leave your candidates in the dark. Be upfront about response timelines and offer regular updates to keep them well-informed throughout the recruitment process. Transparency early on can help build trust, reducing candidate anxiety and improving their impression of your company.
According to iCIMS research, 80% of job seekers report that consistent status updates from hiring companies would greatly improve their experience–and overall impression of the employer.
Ensure candidates feel valued by personalizing communications and interactions with them. Leveraging the right hiring solution can accelerate this approach, removing the time-consuming aspect of manual follow-ups.
iCIMS, for instance, offers marketing automation software to keep job seekers engaged with customizable touchpoints, delivered by email, text message, or automated chat.
Make a practice of regularly gathering and analyzing feedback from your candidates, ideally at various stages in the hiring process. Use the insights you gain to identify improvement areas in your hiring process, and create and implement a strategy to improve any weak spots.
Let your company’s values and work culture shine through during the recruitment process. Stand out in the sea of job posts by highlighting your core beliefs from the jump.
That way, potential candidates can also decide if they align before even applying. With the applicants who decided to submit their CV, you’ll already have begun to foster a sense of connection.
Measuring candidate experience is a key step for attracting and retaining top talent. By tracking key metrics and using these insights to shape your recruiting strategy, you can create a candidate journey that strengthens your recruitment outcomes and reputation as an employer.
Looking for an easier way to find promising potential hires and keep them engaged? Implementing an AI-driven recruiting software like iCIMS Candidate Experience Management (CXM) can help.
iCIMS CXM delivers a comprehensive suite of capabilities to boost talent engagement and optimize recruitment processes. With behavior-based marketing automation and AI insights, iCIMS CXM makes it easy to nurture candidates through personalized communication and content, delivered by the channels they enjoy most.
If you’re ready for that next step, reach out today and book a demo with the iCIMS team. Let’s start transforming your candidate experience.
