How candidate experience is causing a huge impact on businesses

Today’s labour market is candidate-driven

Talent acquisition keeps evolving globally. A study conducted by MRINetwork revealed that recruiters describe today’s labour market as candidate-driven, not employer-driven as it used to be.

If you had to choose one, how would you describe today’s labour market?

Nowadays, candidates have more information available, so they tend to be more selective. In such a new job climate, candidates behave as customers. They carefully screen and evaluate employers before applying for a job. In this case, you should be strongly aware of what your candidate’s (customer’s) journey means to your organization. Now the question is, do you see your candidates as your customers? You definitely should.

The candidate journey is full of touchpoints with your company. Remember that each job candidate is your brand ambassador. Talents should be left with a good impression of the application process and your company as a whole.

A remarkable finding of the previous study is that candidates mainly reject job offers because they accept another offer during the recruitment cycle. For this reason, employers must invest more than ever before in offering an outstanding candidate experience.

Business implications of candidate experience

A growing number of companies are becoming aware of the importance of the candidate journey and investing in the candidate experience.

Virgin Media discovered a lost revenue of £4.4m per year due to a poor recruitment experience in the talent acquisition. Thousands of those candidates were also customers. Strategically, the company decided to strongly invest in a better candidate experience and turned the loss into more than a £5.3m profit. This case is just one example of why placing candidates at the center of recruiting is compulsory in today’s candidate-driven market.

How they calculated the value of a bad candidate experience?

“Then came the easy calculation: if there were 123,000 rejected candidates each year, and 6% canceled their monthly Virgin Media subscription, you end up with about 7,500 cancellations. Multiply that by the £50 ($60) subscription fee and by 12 months, and Johnson realized Virgin Media was losing £4.4 million per year, the equivalent of $5.4 million.”

Non-profit organizations such as the Talent Board and the Candidate Experience (CandE) Awards have emerged to disseminate awareness of a quality candidate experience. The extensive research conducted by the Talent Board has demonstrated the business impact of the candidate experience.

• On average, 41% of global candidates who had a one-star (negative) candidate experience (based on a one to five Likert Scale rating) say they will take product purchases and relationships somewhere else.
• On the contrary, 64% of job seekers with a positive candidate experience (five-star rating) are willing to apply again and referring others to apply.

Similar studies conducted by TalentAdore support those statistics.

Fine-tuning the candidate experience

A great mechanism for a superior candidate experience is constant communication with your applicants at all stages of their journey. In this way, you engage your talents and showcase your brand. TalentAdore has created an innovative solution for this issue. Do you want to differentiate your company from traditional businesses? Be strategic by taking care of your job candidates!