Recruiters are in tight competition for top talent. How can you obtain an edge and improve your chances of securing high-quality candidates? The answer is candidate experience.

Candidates who have a positive experience during recruitment are much more likely to have a high opinion of the organization. They are also more likely to tell people about their positive experience, urge people they know to apply, and apply again themselves even if they didn’t receive an offer. 

In contrast, candidates who have a poor recruitment experience are likely to be vehemently vocal about it both in person and online, refuse to entertain the idea of applying at the same company again, and may even turn down an offer based on what happened during the hiring process. 

[Related Article: 4 Related Articles Why Candidate Experience is Driving Experience in Today’s Market]

How can you create positive candidate experiences for your applicants and improve brand perception? Follow these steps:

1. Make Applying Easy

A staggering 92% of candidates abandon the online application process part of the way through. Making the application steps as easy and few as possible and automating talent acquisition where possible can help.

2. Reduce Assessment Demands

Candidates don’t appreciate feeling like they are being treated with disrespect for their time. Multiple assessments only have a minor effect on Quality of Hire when all is said and done, so consider if you may actually be chasing away your best matches with onerous testing demands.

3. Digitize Reference Checking

Traditional reference checking can be a time sink, and if left to the end of the process, can mean candidates get left hanging and lose hope. Crosschq 360 is designed to help transform the process into a “candidate check” that delivers data-driven results you can use to compare apples to apples across your finalists.

[Related Article: The Secret of Reference Checking]

4. Stay on Top of Recruiters

Identifying which recruiters are performing well and which aren’t is a vital part of constructing a continuously flowing talent pipeline. TalentWall™ by Crosschq puts hiring managers and recruiters on the same page and makes it easier to track performance and demand accountability.

5. Consider Pre-Screened Talent Pools

Reduce recruitment time and improve speed to hire without cutting corners by leveraging ready-to-work talent pools from a candidate referral network. Crosschq Recruit delivers highly qualified candidates who can be onboarded swiftly to shorten time-to-fill and prevent productivity drops when a critical role needs filling fast.

6. Schedule Interviews Quickly

Lengthy time-to-interview can cause your organization to lose top talent after all the work has been done to identify and attract them. Keep your best candidates in the funnel by quickly getting your interview team scheduled with them for that important interview, then allow your team to compare notes and assess candidate fit and culture add potential.

[Related Article: Candidate Interview Scheduling Tips]

7. Maintain Communication

Candidates agree that consistent communication is critical to a positive recruitment experience. Automate candidate workflows and tie them into messaging to keep them engaged and on track. This can help prevent candidates with high value from losing interest - or thinking you’ve lost interest in them.

8. Give and Get Feedback

Candidates who are given feedback, even if they aren’t hired, come away feeling that the candidate experience was positive and are willing to apply again. This can be a huge time saver if a candidate you made an offer to declines or doesn’t work out, and you need to revisit your “silver medalists.” Also, request feedback from your candidates using Crosschq Analytics for survey purposes, and find out where experience is falling short of expectations. 

Following this cheat sheet can help you improve candidate experiences across the board, building your brand reputation as an employer who cares and helps you attract top talent. You’ll also be able to improve your Quality of Hire as you won’t end up with clunky processes that leave you scraping the bottom of the talent barrel. 

Ready to find out how Crosschq can help you improve candidate experience and recruit top talent? Ask us for a demonstration today.