Why candidate experience is important

Why is Candidate Experience So Important?

A great candidate experience has today become the basic requirement for all organizations. Recruiters have to make sure that candidates who become a part of the hiring process do not go away disgruntled with the process.  HR managers have to make sure that employees feel good about working in the company. It is essential to know why candidate experience matters so much and what are the benefits of providing a positive candidate experience?

  1. What is Candidate Experience in Recruitment?
  2. The Impact of Candidate Experience

What is Candidate Experience in Recruitment?

Candidate Experience can be defined as the way job applicants react to employers’ recruitment process that includes sourcing, interviewing, offer, and onboarding process. However, it is not limited to the recruitment process itself, as the interactions a candidate has with the company even before applying to a job there can also be classified as a part of candidate experience.  Candidate experience has been found to directly impact the recruitment performance, which is why it has become a favorite topic of all talent acquisition leaders these days.

(Also Read: How to Measure Candidate Experience )

The Impact of Candidate Experience

About half of the 7000 job applicants who were surveyed as a part of an IBM research responded that they had some sort of interaction with the hiring company even before applying for the job there. The same research tells that job applicants who failed to receive an offer are 80 % more likely to apply again if they had a positive experience with the company. Here are some other points found in the research that tells us about why candidate experience matters:


Positive Candidate Experience increases offer acceptance rate

Companies incur huge capital expenditure in the form of job advertising budgets and other recruitment costs just to get the best talent out there. With the growing competition, these costs are going to rise even further. However, if your candidate experience is sluggish, all these efforts and expenses are going to waste. As per the research, candidates who are satisfied with their hiring experience are 38% more inclined towards accepting the offer. Thus investing in positive candidate experience can not only increase your hiring rate and quality of hire, but also avoid wastage of time and money.

Candidate Experience matters because it is linked to advocacy

A hiring process has the ability to affect candidates in more ways than one. One of the important outcomes is advocacy. Just like satisfied customers would recommend the product to other people in their social circle, candidates who have had a great experience would be willing to recommend the organization to others. The IBM research tells us that candidates who were overall very satisfied with their experience are 34% more likely to recommend the organization to others also. Thus, positive candidate experience is linked to stronger advocacy.

Best in class Candidate Experience enhances Employer Brand

Candidate Experience is not only about the candidate-recruiter relationship. It extends much beyond as candidates most definitely talk about their experiences. Over 60 percent of the job applicants surveyed by IBM share their experiences with others irrespective of whether they had a positive or negative experience or whether they received an offer or not. This word of mouth publicity will have an impact on the employer brand. Needless to say, positive experience will result in positive publicity which will end up enhancing the employer brand.


Positive Candidate Experience is linked with Increased Sales

The impact of candidate experience is far-reaching and affects areas other than recruitment also. While these may not be the immediate consequences, we must consider them nevertheless. 53% of candidates who have had a positive experience are more likely to become a customer of that company against applicants who suffered a negative hiring experience (only 25% say they will be interested in being a customer).  This is glaring evidence that candidate experience can directly impact the business metrics such as sales and since candidates will spread the word around, the results can be amplified.

Given the impact of candidate experience on so many areas, it is imperative for organizations to improve their candidate experience whenever and wherever possible.


How to create a social recruiting strategy

How to Create a Social Recruiting Strategy?

The race to hiring the top talent has become more competitive than ever. Recruiters can’t trust job boards and the career site as their only source of candidates. They need to broaden their recruiting strategy to include more channels and opportunities for making their next hire. These indirect channels sometimes prove more effective means of hiring passive candidates who are normally not active on job boards. Social media is one such indirect medium which has not only simplified communication within our network, but also expanded the reach of any and every business.  Even Talent Acquisition professionals and recruiters can make a huge difference to their hiring outcomes by adopting relevant social media channels in their recruiting strategy. The question remains, how?

What is social recruitment?

Utilizing social media channels for advertising jobs, building CV database and hiring candidates is collectively referred to as social recruiting. Recruiters also use social media to research and identify suitable profiles for critical positions, which may not be looking for jobs actively. This is also called passive recruiting.

Economic prospects are looking optimistic post the 2008 global financial crisis. Businesses are growing rapidly and so is their need for talent. This has transformed recruitment into a highly competitive space where recruiters are using various tools, technologies and techniques instead of just relying on traditional methods. Social media is fast replacing traditional methods as the most effective source of hiring candidates.

Some Social Recruitment Statistics

  • 70 % of hiring managers say social media has helped them successfully find quality hires. (2016)
  • 80% of employers say social media helped them find passive candidates. (2018)
  • 75% of potential candidates are not actively looking for a job change. Social media is the way to reach them.
  • In 2016, 84% of companies were recruiting through social media.
  • 79% of jobseekers are likely to use social media for their job search.
  • 55% of the jobseekers decide to not apply to a job for an employer for which they have read a negative review on social media.

How to Create a Social Media Recruiting Strategy

Figure out the best social recruiting platform for your company

Finding the right talent through social media starts with identifying the channel where your target audience spends most time. If you are an entertainment and media website, chances are you will find your prospective candidates on Facebook or Twitter rather than LinkedIn, because of the media-heavy nature of these social networks. Although LinkedIn is always an important place to start with because of its career specific nature, however in this case you might find passive jobseekers on Facebook consuming your content. In any case there are three most popular social media networks that you should use for social media recruitment:

LinkedIn: LinkedIn tells itself as the network for professionals. It is partly a job board as it advertises jobs from companies, features company pages and provides other recruitment specific features as well. Therefore, recruiting through LinkedIn is a no-brainer. As per data from Social Media Strategies Summit, 92% of recruiters have hired through LinkedIn at least once. It is glaring evidence that LinkedIn remains recruiters’ preferred network to source.

Facebook: If you think Facebook is only for casual conversations and content consumption, you can’t be more mistaken. Data suggests that jobseekers prefer Facebook over LinkedIn for getting hired. 83% of jobseekers are active on Facebook as against 36% active on LinkedIn. Facebook is the world’s largest social network with diversity in age, ethnicity and background. Facebook also provides a very effective targeting system through its paid jobs feature which can help recruiters reach out to rare talent for a particular role.

Twitter: Users on twitter are generally more active than Facebook and LinkedIn, although brevity is the soul of this social network. Using the right hashtags can help you reach out your job opening to potential candidates. Also utilize Twitter lists to connect with passive candidates.

Also Read: How to Improve Talent Acquisition?


Do Employer Branding with Social Media

Important reason recruiters should use social media for recruitment is that it provides them an opportunity to build a strong employer brand. The goal of building a commendable employer brand is to attract high-quality talent and social media can play an important role in this process. As per a LinkedIn survey, 75% of candidates research the social media to check a company’s reputation and 69% of them won’t apply to a company with a negative reputation even if they are unemployed.  This makes it imperative for recruiters to put more time, effort and resources into promoting their employer brand on social media.

To establish an active and positive social media presence one needs to think about the brand messaging such as highlighting the most important parts of the company work culture through social media platforms.

Involve your employees while recruiting with social media

Having a strong employer brand automatically will enable you to use your current employees as your biggest advocates. If you allow your employees to share their voice on social media, prospective candidates will have an authentic and an insider view of the existing work culture, values and environment which they want to learn about. Employee advocacy is a recent concept that businesses are still warming to.  However, using employees to spread your message will not only increase the reach but also find an audience that is more willing to listen. Numerous studies show that people trust people rather than brands. This is why employees should be an indispensable part of your social recruitment strategy.

Also Read: Why Employee Referral are the Best Source of Hire?

Measure Results of Social Media Recruiting

To figure out the RoI of your social recruiting efforts it is essential to track all activities undertaken as a part of the strategy. Quality should always be given priority over quantity. Some of the obvious metrics that you would want to track include source of hire, time to hire, referral rates, and cost to hire. Tracking the number of applications submitted through social networks will help you find the reach of the network and the effectiveness of the recruiting strategy. Similarly, if your referral rates are going up, it effectively means your employees are sharing more jobs on social media which is again a sign of social recruiting success.

Use recruiting tools that enable social media recruitment

Instead of working on a standalone social recruiting strategy, a recruiter must make efforts to include it in their existing hiring process seamlessly. Therefore, the tools that are being used for recruitment, such as an Applicant tracking system must also be equipped to enable social recruiting. Features like one click sharing on multiple social media channels, source tracking and tracking referrals coming through social media are a must if you want an accurate picture of your social recruiting efforts.   Therefore, invest in a comprehensive applicant tracking system that not only automates your hiring process but also enables a social media recruiting.

Also Read: Top 5 Recruitment Metrics That Matter

why employee referral is best source of hire

Why Employee Referrals are the Best Source of Hire?

Every organization wants to hire the best talent out there and therefore spends great time and money on advertising jobs on multiple boards to source maximum applicants for a role. But do you know that there is one source which doesn’t require any significant advertising budget and yet returns better quality talent than other sources? Yes, that one source is called Employee Referral. What are the myriad benefits of hiring through employee referrals? Let’s examine.

What are employee referrals?

Employee referrals are the candidates sourced through an internal recruitment drive where current employees of an organization provide potential candidates for a vacancy using their social network. Recruiters sources candidates using their current employees, and in return offers them monetary or other rewards. An employee referral program is used to perform this entire activity.

The Importance of Employee Referrals

The growing talent war has forced organizations to try out innovative ways of sourcing. Today’s job market has given more power to candidates where they can choose and pick roles as per their eligibility and future aspirations. In a talent driven market, recruitment must change, and that involves making it a more personalized and long-term process. Recruiters do not have a magic wand to identify the best talent for any given role, but they certainly can use all the help that is provided. Employee referrals is a way of including the existing employees in an organization to identify and recruit quality talent. For many reasons, employee referrals have proven to be one of the best ways of sourcing.

Employee Referrals Advantages

There are numerous direct and indirect benefits of employee referrals. Here we list the top 5 which make it the best approach to recruitment.

Employee Referrals Increases Retention

Employee referrals are usually more reliable because they already have an idea of the company’s vision, work culture through your employee. Thus, they know what to expect and won’t be left scratching their heads once hired. Being familiar with the environment, the new employee won’t take much time to absorb and adapt to it and would stay longer than other employees.

Employee Referrals Improve Quality of Hire

The quality of talent is always high when hired through an internal recruitment method such as employee referral. The biggest reason is that your employee has already done the initial screening by considering if he is right fit for the job. No employee would put their reputation at stake just for the sake of a small monetary reward. Therefore, they will only be referring candidates once they are sure about their suitability and eligibility of the role. A poor referral reflects badly on the employee also, putting a question over their judgment skills. Most employees are wise enough to understand this and therefore provide only high quality candidates as a referral.

(Also Read: Purpose of Having a Dedicated Employee Referral Program)

Employee Referrals Reduce Cost to Hire

With no expensive advertising on multiple job boards, it is a given that employee referrals will cost you less than other sourcing channels. Plus, as a recruiter you will be saving a lot of productivity in screening the candidates as that’s already been done by the employee. This will also impact the hiring cycle positively, shortening it, which ultimately brings down the hiring costs further.

(Also Read: Top 5 Recruitment Metrics That Matter)

Hire more specialized candidates with employee referrals

When it comes to finding candidates with specific skills, nothing works like employee referrals. Employees have personal communication with their network and that’s how their knowledge about the candidate’s professional skills and capabilities is far greater than that of a normal recruiter. Sometimes, an ATS or any other screening system may miss those specific skills while screening, or the candidate themselves may not put it prominently in their CV. However, since the employee has a personal connection they would surely know about it and would recommend them for that position. Therefore, employee referrals are very helpful while sourcing for hard to fill positions.

 Employee referral Statistics

The data on employee referrals is the biggest reason why they are called the best source of hire. There are plenty of researches that have proved the superiority of employee referrals over other sourcing channels.


When we have strong evidences supporting the employee referrals as a recruitment method, it makes sense to invest in it and may be use employee referral software to get optimum results.