Recruitment Survey: Track the Candidate Experience

The current job market poses a challenge for many companies. What's going on? Let's take you through some illustrative CBS figures. In the Netherlands, there is a historically low unemployment rate (3.1% in 2023 compared to 3.6% in 2022). Furthermore, there has been a growing job vacancy rate for three consecutive years; in 2023, this number was 123,000.

In a labor market where the labor force participation is high (72.2%), this means that organizations must make an effort to attract candidates. In short, candidates have many options. When a candidate shows interest in your organization and applies, you want to provide them with a good candidate experience. This is the way candidates are treated during the application process, from the first contact to the final decision, as this greatly influences their perception of your company.

Let's illustrate this through research and the opportunities during an application. We'll consider three personas: Candidates, New Employees, and Rejected Candidates.

Candidates in the Recruitment Process

It is extremely important to give candidates a positive recruitment experience for the following reasons. When they have a positive recruitment experience, they are more likely to:

Accept a job offer (Maurer et al., 2013)
Recommend the company to others (Ambler & Schminke, 2009)
Become a loyal employee (Hinkin & Tracey, 1996)

Outcomes of candidate experiences

If a candidate and organization proceed together

When a candidate and organization decide to continue together, and the candidate joins as an employee, they carry this experience with them. The recruitment experience impacts the performance of the employee, positively and negatively.

With a positive recruitment experience, new hires are more likely to:

Be engaged in their work (Meyer et al., 2006)
Be productive (Kuvaas & Dysvik, 2005)
Stay with the company long-term (Hom & Griffeth, 1995)

New hires who have a negative recruitment experience are more likely to:

Be dissatisfied with their job (Griffeth et al., 2000)
Experience stress (Saks & Ashforth, 1997)
Look for another job (Mobley et al., 1979)

As you can see, the experience during the recruitment process can have a significant impact on the employee and indirectly on the company's operations and customer experience.

If a candidate and organization do not proceed together

Of course, not every candidate is ultimately hired. However, it is important that candidates who are rejected during the recruitment process have received a good and positive impression of your organization. This way, they can continue to function as ambassadors.

Rejected candidates who have a positive recruitment experience are more likely to:

Continue to follow the company (Saks & Ashforth, 1997)
Recommend the company to others (Ambler & Schminke, 2009)
Apply for another position at the company in the future (Maurer et al., 2013)

Elements of a positive experience:

Quick and friendly rejection
Explanation of the reason for rejection
Opportunity to provide feedback

Rejected candidates who have a negative recruitment experience are more likely to:

Give the company a bad reputation (Gatewood & Feild, 1998)
Be dissatisfied with how they were treated (Organ & Ryan, 1995)
Not consider the company for future applications (Maurer et al., 2013)

Data-Driven Talent Acquisition

It remains essential to continuously measure candidates' perception of the quality and effectiveness of your recruitment process and personnel. This could include:

Candidate satisfaction: How did they experience the process? Was the communication clear, and did they feel valued?
Recruiter effectiveness: Was the recruiter friendly, helpful, and professional?
Process efficiency: How long did the process take, and was the turnaround time acceptable?

Based on this, you can establish KPIs for Talent Acquisition, such as eNPS per recruiter and ratings from candidates and managers on turnaround time, friendliness, and responsiveness.

By making data-driven decisions and improving your recruitment process based on concrete feedback, you can strive for a better candidate experience and thereby increase the chance of attracting top candidates for your company.

Highbergs solution

At Highberg, we provide a questionnaire for the recruitment journey, in which the experiences of the candidate, manager, and recruiter are evaluated. This provides a balanced insight into the experiences of all involved parties throughout the process, making it easier to identify and address areas for improvement, such as communication, turnaround time, and expectations.

Our solution can be seamlessly integrated into your daily recruitment process, so that it is automatically activated by certain actions, such as rejections or acceptances. This closes the feedback loop and allows improvements to be implemented directly.

The results of the evaluations can be displayed in a standard PowerBI dashboard, which can flexibly run within your own infrastructure or that of Highberg, depending on your preferences and requirements. This provides a clear and visual representation of the data, allowing you to quickly understand the performance of your recruitment process and make necessary adjustments as needed.

Want to know more?

Are you curious about how you can improve your recruitment process in a data-driven way? Contact Alex Hellemons!