Dive Brief:
- Talent Board announced that the winners of its 2018 North American Candidate Experience Awards (CandE) received higher average year-over-year ratings by 13%. The nonprofit organization, which focuses on promoting and benchmarking research on candidate experience, noted 65 companies for excellence in creating positive candidate experiences in the recruiting process.
- Among other organizations, winners included: American Airlines, AT&T, Davita Kidney Care, Eli Lilly, Exelon, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, Hilton Worldwide, Humana, JetBlue Airways, Johnson & Johnson, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, KPMG Group, Lockheed Martin, M&T Bank, Marriott International, Sheetz, Inc., Southwest Airlines, T-Mobile and Waste Management.
- Companies were rated based on responses from more than 130,000 job candidates, who were asked four questions in a survey: 1) how they would rank their overall experience; 2) how likely they would reapply to the organization; 3) whether they would refer other job seekers to the organization; and 4) how they would alter their relationship with the organization in the future based on their experience.
Dive Insight:
A tight labor market puts even more pressure on employers to enhance the candidate experience because workers have their pick of the kind of employers for which they want to work. This means candidates expect to hear back from recruiters in a timely manner at key points during the recruiting process, such as after they submit a resume or application form, following an interview or when a hiring decision is made.
A study by Montage, a firm specializing in engaging, interviewing and hiring, found that candidate experience is a major priority of talent acquisition leaders at major corporations. A separate study of Fortune 500 companies found that a poor candidate experience can derail the best planned recruiting efforts. Companies whose candidates report having had a bad experience typically fail in three areas: attraction, engagement and conversion. This may encourage employers to assess their recruiting processes, since companies risk losing needed talent when job seekers are less than impressed.
And with more of today's job seekers relying on employee ratings — of how both employees and candidates are treated — to evaluate competing offers, employers are staking their reputation partly on their recruiting process. In fact, a CareerArc study found that employers with poor ratings attract only one in five applicants.
Personalizing the candidate experience, and leveraging technology to do so, are key in attracting, engaging and hiring qualified talent.
