Hiring someone is not just the process of filling in candidates and paying them to get your work done, hiring is the process of crafting and adding a new well suited member to the “Work Family”. Hiring process is not just important from a candidate's point of view but also from the company’s point of view too!
Viewing a candidate as just another human and creating an environment of empathy leads to a successful hiring process. Establishing communication and different upfronts for a candidate to understand everything from the company’s needs to the demands and goals. Creating a positive impact on a candidate becomes important. Hence there are ways to establish a healthy hiring process.
Here are the 8 things that hiring managers should know about candidate experience:
The initial phases of the hiring process include job posting, job description and sorting out potential candidates. These initial phases or processes are the very defining points of how a candidate me perceive a company to be. Doing a lousy job in mentioning the job description may end up in a lack of great candidates and time waste of both the company and the candidate. As there is a saying “First impression is the last impression”, it is way too true in the hiring process as the job posting and description and the approach that a company follows into identifying potential candidates tells a lot about what is going on within the company.
An example can be Google, Google is known for its meticulous and extensive hiring process. Google has a highly structured, detailed and competitive recruitment process which is carried out in several steps or stages. Google carries out its recruitment process in several stages divided basically into: Application process, Resume screening, Online assessment(which is optional), Phone/Google meet screening interviews, Onsite or Virtual Interviews, Hiring committee review, Executive review, Offer Decision, Background Check and then Onboarding. This detailed stage wise process helps not only in creating great impressions but also in eliminating not suitable candidates.
Clear communication and delivery of what the company wants and what the processes of recruitment will be are the key to a successful recruitment process, this in fact ensures great experience for candidates throughout the process. Communicating the demands, criteria, needs and what the candidate can benefit from the company makes it important to understand that clear communication from the hiring team is really important for a smooth candidate hunt. Candidates value transparency. The hiring team should inform the candidates about the timeline, stages that will be conducted and when along with the venue to make it easy for far livers to reach the designated centre and last but not the least what can a candidate expect next.
Respect goes both ways, candidates may range over a diverse age demographic depending on the position they are being hired at, young candidates appreciate understanding, and older candidates appreciate humbleness. Respecting boundaries and refraining from asking personal questions helps in delivering a serious impact on the candidate so that they don't end up considering the company a nuisance which again highlights the point of respecting the equation between the hiring manager and the candidate.
For example, A candidate is feeling a little uncomfortable so in such situations the hiring managers should be considerate of the pressure a candidate faces and be polite in the process and try not to be rude.
Managing timelines can be a difficult task for anyone which implies to the hiring team too!
Having a clear idea of how much time will the process consume and valuing the time of others holds an important key to candidate experience. Hiring managers should meticulously schedule all the rounds or stages accordingly while considering the candidate’s availability. Keeping national holidays in mind helps in not taking away someone’s comfort time. Being the hiring manager it becomes a duty to keep the back end and front end timings managed. Beginning from the initial phases like applications, there should be sessions that help out the candidates to understand company’s needs, the opening and closing time of applications should be fixed and pre decided to avoid any conflict that could occur, same goes for all the other processes.
Carrying out an unbiased and inclusive hiring process is a major factor towards positive candidate experience. Candidates appreciate transparency, inclusiveness and diversity in the hiring process. Hiring managers should be conscious about the environment they are creating. By inclusion it means people of all caste, race and colour, there should be no judgement based on anything but their skills. It is the skills that set a candidate apart and hence the criteria for a perfect candidate should be the all over skills of the candidate. When being inclusive, keeping the language that the interview or anything related to the hiring process will be conducted should be kept in mind and if there is a need to fix a language the candidates should be informed prior.
For example, in India we have 22 official languages and a total of 121 languages differing in dialects which shows how diverse the candidate pool can be. Hence, keeping in mind the inclusivity makes a positive impact on candidates.
The recruitment process not only just deals with the onboarding processes but also the follow ups that occur. Communicating with the candidates after the interview session by helping them to follow up with whatever the result may be. It does not matter if a candidate has been selected or not, timely communication of the confirmation of both rejection and acceptance leaves a positive impact and works in the betterment of candidate experience. A clear offer letter on selection and a graceful rejection letter on no selection helps the candidates to move on to further opportunities.
Candidates appreciate feedback, even if they are not selected. Learning about where a person or candidate is lagging gives them a way to better understand themselves. It provides them a way to deal with future opportunities and what the industry standards look like. For example, a candidate being hired gets rejected due to lack of communication, hence constructive criticism and honest feedback on the lacking part will really help out the candidate for the future ventures.
A great candidate experience includes several aspects. There are several other aspects to be considered by hiring managers in the selection to deliver positive candidate experience.
Some of those factors are:
When a person submits in referrals it becomes the responsibility of the hiring manager to identify the authenticity of the submission. Referrals are important as they can be a really great source of identifying potential candidates and considering the referrals help on a better understanding of the candidates.
Interviewers reflect company culture. A company’s culture reflects a candidate's future.
No wonder some people change companies due to the lack of an efficient and friendly company culture. When hiring managers carry out several processes which showcases how well a company is structured as Hiring Managers are employees too!
The hiring employees should make clear their expectations from the candidate. The expectation too should be reasonable and valid.
Candidates should be gracefully notified of any rejections they face in the hiring process as they too are humans. Empathy is an important factor and quality that every hiring manager should hold.
Every hiring manager should be well versed or should at least have a basic knowledge to leverage technology for one’s own benefit.
Candidate experience is not just about hiring. It is also about the stages, leniency, flexibility and streamlined recruitment process.
← Go back