When was the last time you applied to one of your organization’s jobs via the applicant tracking system (ATS)? Do you really know what candidates think and how they feel about the experience they have with your company, your application, your recruiters, your hiring managers? If your candidate experience were to receive a grade – using a grading system like in elementary schools – would it receive an Outstanding (O), Satisfactory Plus (S+), or Satisfactory (S)? 

For the past decade or more, talent acquisition (TA) and ATS providers have engineered hiring processes and recruitment technologies by putting organizations’ needs at the center. Not candidates’. Today’s TA teams continue to put candidates through a process. Not a meaningful experience. Do you know how successful video game developers create games? By first thinking about the experience they want players (their target audience) to have. Then, they design and build the game to achieve it. It’s not about putting players through a gaming process. 

What if we tried a similar approach? 

In Permission Marketing, Seth Godin writes, “marketers must earn the right to deliver anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who want to get them.” The same is true for today’s talent acquisition and employer brand professionals, and doing so can elevate your candidate experience out of its simply satisfactory current state. Today’s candidates evaluate organizations as employers by what they hear, read, see, and experience. 

And they want the candidate experience to feel a lot more like the consumer experiences they are now accustomed to. 

According to the Talent Board’s Candidate Experience Recruiting Focus 2020 report, the #1 recruiting initiative for 2020 is improving candidate experience. Followed by employer branding, recruitment marketing, analytics and data management, diversity and inclusion, employee referral programs, sourcing, and career site development. Should candidate experience be at the top of your list?

This quiz will get you thinking 

Answer all questions as they relate to your current organization’s candidate experience.

10 – 12 YES 
Keep up the outstanding work! You’re ensuring candidates have a positive experience with your organization. Consider an annual audit of your candidate experience to identify areas to improve and further put the candidate at the center. (<---That’s worth sharing. Tweet your score!)

6 – 9 YES

You’re providing an average experience to candidates. But today’s candidates want and expect more. By assessing and improving your candidate experience, you can further engage and captivate candidates while standing out from your competition. 

3 - 5 YES

Your candidate experience is satisfactory, meaning there is a lot of opportunity to improve both your talent strategy and the bottom line.

0 - 2 YES 

Your candidate experience is subpar meaning there is a lot of opportunity to improve. Your overall talent acquisition strategy will benefit from deep candidate experience research and a full assessment to understand the current state and design a better overall experience for people. 

MOSTLY UNSURE

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and start an honest assessment of your candidate experience. Let that data help drive your candidate experience priorities and decisions. 

Why focus on your candidate experience in 2020?

There are a whole host of reasons: there’s a war for talent; it’s a candidate-driven market; unemployment is still at all-time lows in many areas; social media impacts perceptions and candidate consideration; you need great people for your team—and so does everyone else. If that doesn’t prompt action, perhaps this will, an IBM Smarter Workforce Institute study indicates “over 60 percent of candidates talk about their experiences with friends and family … candidates who have a positive experience with your organization are twice as likely to want to become a customer compared to those who have a poor candidate experience.” (<—Click to tweet!)

Take the next step 

This quiz is based upon the industry’s first candidate-centric model developed by exaqueo in partnership with leading thinkers and executives across talent acquisition. It’s meant to spark thinking and ignite action. Learn about the new model and how to strategically advance your candidate experience—register for this free webinar on January 15, 2020. 

We believe in furthering the candidate experience conversation. Find us on Twitter, live chatting on January 15 at 1 pm ET using #CandExperienceDay2020, or contact us anytime.