Offering a strong candidate experience is essential to hire talented people. We tell you how to do it remotely.
Candidate experience has never been a hotter topic.
Don’t take my word for it – here’s what Google has to say about it.
In this blog post, we’re sharing in-house tips to offer a qualitative and consistent candidate experience – even when hiring remotely.
Click to jump on the desired section.
The term Candidate Experience describes how candidates feel about your brand once they have entered your recruitment process. It shares a lot of similarities with the customer experience.
Read: if customers receive a poor experience from a brand, they will likely not come back.
Job seekers undergo the same thought process.
Consequently, brands offering a so-so hiring experience have a harder time to hire talented candidates. This can be a major problem for many businesses just as COVID-19 is revamping the entire hiring process.
It probably didn’t escape your attention that COVID-19 has shaken our world, and we’re now on the brink of a terrible economic crisis. Now, during (most) economic crises, candidate experience is often greatly depreciated, as businesses assume that candidates should consider themselves lucky to be interviewed in the first place.
But it’s not what is happening at the moment. In fact, optimizing the candidate experience has never been more critical for businesses.
We believe that 3 factors are fueling the change.
Global Consumer Pulse Research (Accenture, 2018) reveals that consumers are more likely to spend their money on companies that care. This means that brands treating their employees, customers, and candidates well are more likely to attract (and keep) customers.
What’s more, according to CareerARc (2017), 64% of job seekers say that a poor candidate experience would make them less likely to purchase goods and services from an employer.
Candidates need to know that you won’t take any unnecessary risks during the interview process. One way to do this is, of course, to allow remote interviews, from their homes.
Now, some specific interview procedures may require them to go to specific off-site locations. As an example, if you require candidates to undergo a drug test, you need to make sure that it’s not happening at a place where COVID-19 tests also take place. And if it does, let candidates know that it is 100% safe.
format_quote“You might call it common sense, but given the unique situation we’re in, being transparent about safety measures will contribute to reducing stress levels for candidates, thus improving their overall candidate experience with your brand.” –Miikka Tuomola, Business Development Director at Recright
“You might call it common sense, but given the unique situation we’re in, being transparent about safety measures will contribute to reducing stress levels for candidates, thus improving their overall candidate experience with your brand.”
–Miikka Tuomola, Business Development Director at Recright
Two words: social media.
Social media has given brands new ways to reach out to millions of people all around the world, in an instant. However, social media is a double-edged sword. What businesses gained in reach, they lost in control over their own messaging.
Read: if a brand offers a terrible hiring experience to job seekers, it will face social media backlash, potentially destroying a reputation that took many years to build.
We – humans – are social animals. We need interaction to fully function. This is something that we’ve all gotten to realize the hard way after undergoing strict social distancing rules.
We believe that remote recruiting adds two extra challenges for businesses to provide a high-quality candidate experience:
This one is a no brainer. When recruiting remotely, you won’t get to meet candidates in the flesh before later stages – if you deem it necessary. In the meantime, candidates won’t get to meet you and your teams either, potentially making the process colder and somewhat less genuine.
When interviewed in your office space, candidates can learn a lot about your company just by looking around:
When in the middle of a remote hiring process, candidates won’t, at first, have the chance to take the temperature of your office’s atmosphere. Instead, they will have to trust your word based on what you’re willing to share.
Sure, stories and pictures can say something about your business and how it cares for its employees, but it may be difficult for some candidates to grasp the full picture without being given a chance to visit the office space. Having said that, we’ll see later in this blog post that video can help.
format_quote“When hiring remotely, you need to make up for the lack of proximity with a failproof candidate experience.” –Jussi Luhtasela, CEO at Recright
“When hiring remotely, you need to make up for the lack of proximity with a failproof candidate experience.”
–Jussi Luhtasela, CEO at Recright
Offering a better candidate experience isn’t only about showing candidates a nice time. It has significant perks for businesses.
Great candidates are likely to be vetted by more than one company.
In fact, we know that once in the middle of a hiring process, a whopping 56% of candidates are also discussing with 2+ other companies. In this (common) scenario, a strong employer brand decreases the probability of a candidate accepting a counteroffer from another business at the very last minute, thus wasting your time, energy, and money.
Improving the hiring experience for candidates will significantly increase the efficiency of your existing process. Now, efficiency isn’t only about speed, it’s about making the best of a situation, given your time and resources.
At the end of the day, a better candidate experience will decrease your cost and time to hire.
A positive hiring experience builds up for establishing more loyalty and trust between new hires and their employers.
What’s more, your employees are your best brand ambassadors. In other words, being able to keep great people around will contribute to attracting more.
It’s a virtuous circle.
Now that you’re aware of the many benefits of a positive candidate experience, let’s take a look at what makes a great candidate experience.
In 2020, you need to leverage the video format not only to catch your audience’s attention, but also to show who you are and highlight what makes you different.
Think about this. Remote job seekers don’t have the luxury to come to your office, shake hands, and share an informal coffee with their (potential) future coworkers. One way to solve this is to bring your office life … to them, with a company culture video.
It doesn’t need to be fancy. All you really need is a good camera, a decent microphone, volunteer colleagues, and a good story to tell. Here’s an example I really liked, from Zendesk.
This type of content works wonders to introduce your business as it shows how it really feels to spend a day at the office.
If you need more convincing, know that recruiting agencies report 800% more engagement with job postings that have a video embedded.
Based on our discussions with both recruiters and candidates, we’ve identified 5 elements to take into account to improve your candidates’ job searches.
You know your company and what it does better than anyone else. Consequently, you may be using a lot of words and appellations that are specific to your industry. So specific that no one outside of your bubble can understand them.
Here’s an example:
Having a headache yet?
The use of jargon is inevitable as each market and profession is unique in many ways. Having said that, we find that the best way to avoid using too much jargon is to:
Do not copy/paste your “about us” page.
Overwhelm your candidates with (jargony) information and you will bore them. Instead, briefly introduce what your organization is about.
Here’s a winning example from L’Oreal.
In 3 short and sweet sentences, job seekers get all the information they need to make up their minds.
No one likes to read blobs of text. Instead, clearly structure and space out your job ads as follows:
Here’s an example of a well-structured ad from Tory Burch:
Yet another no brainer. Building high hopes and applying to a position that’s not available anymore is extremely deceiving for job seekers. This is why you should unpublish ads as soon as you start the interview process or, at the very least, as soon as you’ve hired someone to fill the position.
If we recommend that you host your hiring process on your own career site, you need to let the world know that you’re seeking talented candidates. Or course, you may rely on job and talent boards, as well as on social media platforms to get more eyeballs on your ads, but quantity isn’t the best option when it comes to hiring talents.
If you’re looking for talented profiles, we recommend that you make use of niche job boards.
Our partners from SmartRecruiters identified 50 great niche job boards, take a look!
What is this?
An ATS is an all-in-one platform designed to help Human Resources professionals and team leaders to manage and oversee the entirety of their recruitment operations.
An Applicant Tracking System gives businesses full control of their recruitment strategies and eases the communication between all parties involved.
As a direct consequence, candidates will enjoy a much smoother experience.
If you’re working for a well-established company, there’s no doubt that you’re already using an applicant tracking system or a similar recruitment software.
A pre-recorded video interview is an interview that’s taking place remotely, both in space and time.
You (the recruiter) record a series of questions using video, and candidates record their answers in turn, also using video.
This gives candidates an equal chance to show who they are.
Moreover, recruiters don’t only have to rely on CVs to identify candidates they wish to interview. Instead, recruiters can discover each candidate for who they are and can select the best profiles for the next steps of the hiring process.
In short, video interviews make your process more efficient.
format_quote“It’s much more efficient to use a video interview tool instead of scheduling sessions with candidates. We don’t have to sit down and schedule all the interviews and contact people. It makes jobs more flexible and easier to manage.” –Linda Wall, Recruiter at Volvo Cars
“It’s much more efficient to use a video interview tool instead of scheduling sessions with candidates. We don’t have to sit down and schedule all the interviews and contact people. It makes jobs more flexible and easier to manage.”
–Linda Wall, Recruiter at Volvo Cars
If your ATS doesn’t contain video interviewing features, you can integrate it with Recight video interviews. This will allow you to perform all your interview related actions directly from your ATS.
How to set up your pre-recorded video interviews (with Recright)
Create a job offer
Record your video interview questions
Screen the candidates’ video replies
Interview the top candidates personally
The one thing that all job seekers have in common? They hate being left in the dark after applying for a job.
If you want to offer all candidates the best possible experience, be empathetic, and don’t be afraid to over-communicate.
Do this as soon as you can. Past your screening process, let those who didn’t make the cut know that you won’t consider them for this position.
Now, if you receive hundreds of job applications, you certainly don’t have the time to do this manually. Fortunately, using an ATS, you can automate this process.
Let the candidates you’ve selected know how the entire process will look like and how long it will take. Here’s a list of things to consider:
Follow-up early on (and often).
Applicants will appreciate follow-up calls, whether it is to announce positive, or negative news. In the latter scenario, take the time to explain why.
In return for your honesty, you may receive precious and honest feedback about your hiring process. Bread and butter to improve your candidate experience.
Keep in mind that over-communication will always prevail over no communication at all, especially when you can’t meet in person.
Being interviewed 100% remotely is new for most candidates – and maybe for you too.
Doing something new, without a proper structure increases the chances of being sloppy. Naturally, this is something you want to avoid, especially when trying to hire new talents.
When interviewing someone live, you obviously can’t copy/paste your speech, but you can follow a predefined structure. This will ensure that you cover the same things with all the candidates and, therefore, leave less room for recruitment bias.
You want candidates to be at their best.
Let them know, in advance, how the interviews will look like and who’s going to attend. If you use specific tools to run your live interviews, it doesn’t hurt to send your candidates short how-to documentation beforehand. Doing so, you’ll avoid surprises and greatly reduce stress levels on their end.
You can’t write everything you hear during an interview and there’s a chance that you’ll forget parts of the conversation you’ve had with candidates. Worst even, you could mix them up.
You can keep a trace of everything that has been discussed during the interview, and with whom, by recording the interview.
What’s more, because you can share the recordings and involve more stakeholders in the process, it leaves less room for bias and thus makes the exercise fairer for candidates.
For evident privacy reasons, always ask for permission to record the interviews.
The best way to improve your candidate experience is to involve your candidates in your iteration process.
format_quote“You can’t improve your candidate experience if you don’t consider candidates’ needs and wants.” –Miikka Tuomola, Business Development Director at Recright
“You can’t improve your candidate experience if you don’t consider candidates’ needs and wants.”
There are two ways to do this:
Using an ATS, you can ask candidates to rate the quality of their experience right after they have applied.
This will help you make your job ads more relevant – as well as refine the video interview questions of your application process.
Further down the road, you’ll find it highly effective to ask candidates you’ve gotten a chance to talk to to share feedback on their candidate experience.
While this can be intimidating for candidates, you should be able to receive honest feedback that will help you to improve your overall remote hiring process. To reduce the likelihood of receiving overly positive feedback, we recommend doing this once you’re done with your interview process.
The recruitment process doesn’t really end when signing a contract. It ends with onboarding.
Now, we won’t teach you how to onboard newcomers in your organization. Having said that, and given the circumstances, we thought that it would be useful to share an extra set of tips to onboard your new colleagues … remotely.
While you need to be available to answer all the questions that newcomers may have, it can be highly beneficial to store your onboarding documentation on Google Drive or on an Intranet. This could include:
Lastly, book a feedback session to sit down with recently hired colleagues to hear their thoughts on your onboarding process. This is an ideal way to identify what works, what does not work, as well as what could be improved to make the process better and deliver a smoother experience in the future.
format_quoteNothing is ever perfect. And that’s okay… as long as you’re willing to accept it – and improve your existing processes. –Jussi Luhtasela, CEO at Recright
Nothing is ever perfect. And that’s okay… as long as you’re willing to accept it – and improve your existing processes.
There you have it, folks. You now know everything you need to know to offer a better candidate experience when recruiting remotely.
