Welcome to the parallel worlds of recruiters and candidates! Why parallel? Because they do not seem to meet anywhere. Isn't their relationship somewhat like Tom and Jerry, where the recruiters depict Tom and Jerry as candidates?

Recruiters and job seekers are like Tom and Jerry - it is truly a love/hate relationship, and one could not survive the other. 

Recruiters constantly search for candidates with suitable qualifications and work experience, and candidates, on the other hand, escape from their hands. But why is it so?  Is there something recruiters are missing out on? Yes, it's called CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE.

Candidate Experience Defined

A job seeker's perception of a company's recruitment cycle, including attracting, obtaining, enrolling, interviewing, and onboarding, is called candidate experience.

CX is how a candidate perceives the company's recruitment cycle from attracting to onboarding. When job seekers feel their time is respected and there is transparent communication, that is when a positive candidate experience exists. A positive candidate experience is crucial to the employer’s brand and reputation, regardless of the outcome.

As per the TalentBoard report, among the recruiting priorities for 2022, companies from several domains place candidate experience as their top priority.

What does a great CX entail?

A good candidate experience consists of various elements, including:

• Streamlining the application process by reducing repetition of candidate resume data
• Automating the time-consuming tasks to speed up time to fill
• Effective communication with the candidates during all stages of the recruitment process
• Follow-up with previous candidates and inform them of other job openings they might be interested in

A career page/job site is not just about the job postings; it reflects your organization's culture, environment, mission, and values.

How can Candidate Experience benefit the Recruiters?

A good candidate experience benefits job seekers, but recruiters also benefit.

1. Higher candidate attraction and conversion rates

Do you know what is imperative to the candidate for establishing an employer-employee trust? It's the speed of response that matters most to them. 

Early in the hiring process, applicants expect to hear back, even if it is just an automated email. It is crucial to have a positive candidate experience to reduce friction and automate manual, low-touch processes throughout the application process.

Enterprises that enhanced their candidate experience by automating parts of their recruiting cycle through tools like email automation, AI-powered resume screening, and chatbots have seen an exponential conversion rate on their career sites and a substantial decrease in cost per hire. 

According to FinancesOnline, nearly 82% of job seekers would share a positive candidate experience versus 69% who would share a negative candidate experience. 

2. Increased profitability and employer brand

Candidates who have a negative experience take their brand loyalty and purchases elsewhere. Alternatively, candidates who have had a positive experience are more likely to return and refer others.

3. It decreases your time to hire

Good communication and a structured hiring process are vital to providing a positive candidate experience. As a result, you will keep your candidates happy, but you will also hire faster.

If you know what to expect from each step in your hiring process, you won't have to restart the hiring process every time you need to fill a new role. 

And that can significantly reduce your time to hire. Simply improving the candidate experience will improve your entire recruitment process.

4. Increased job acceptance rate

Good candidate experiences can be decisive when accepting a new position. In reality, candidates satisfied with their experience are more likely to accept a job offer. Happier candidates are more likely to want to work for your organization. And, because hiring is a significant expenditure, giving a superior candidate experience will result in a higher ROI.

5. It increases client loyalty

Since customer experience directly impacts revenue, businesses pay more attention to it. However, ignoring your candidate's experience will cost you long-term.

Unhappy candidates with poor CX are less likely to invest in your organization concerning the purchase of goods and services. Imagine not investing in CX and losing a hundred candidates? You could be missing out on a hundred prospective consumers.

The Obstacles in Creating a Favorable Candidate Experience

Although candidate experience is the top recruiting goal for employers, there are obstacles to overcome to improve it.

1. Insufficient knowledge

Several businesses believe that a negative candidate experience has little to no effect on the firm. This explains why candidate experience was overlooked in the past.

As we know that the recruiting market is fiercely competitive, the emergence of review sites such as Glassdoor has changed how prospects perceive their recruiting process, shifting this impression.

2. Overburdened recruiters

Recruiters are on the brink of burnout. It's not just the hiring process that makes recruiters overburdened and exhausted. Additional tasks such as manual resume data entry and constant communication with the candidates occupy most of their time. 

With this kind of strain, it is hard to provide a humane touch experience to every candidate.

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3. Absence of HR tech tools

When it comes to HR technology, small and midsize enterprises face many of the same difficulties. In most cases, innovative HR technology tools such as resume parser, search and match, and taxonomy can solve these obstacles.

HR Tech tools can assist you in making better and faster-hiring decisions. Resume parser API can be integrated into an applicant tracking system (ATS) to manage hiring. It can enable you to create a repository of competent applicants and resumes that you can browse and call on when a vacancy becomes available.

According to McKinsey, nearly 50% of respondents said their organizations had implemented AI in at least one business function.

4. Uneven processes and unrealistic expectations

One of the most common concerns expressed by job seekers is the desire to be notified if the organization rejects them for the role. However, most companies do not bother to inform the candidates. Not closing the channel loses the candidates for the current roles and diminishes the candidate's prospects of applying for future positions.

There are significant gaps in finding suitable candidates for filling the right jobs. Therefore, employers are losing out on outstanding talent. Hiring cannot be efficient and streamlined unless appropriate HR tech tools and software fill the gaps.

Tools to Improve the Candidate Experience

Currently, successful recruiting is not possible without AI and automation. Present-day employers and employment seekers both understand this truth.

The easiest way to improve your candidate experience is to shorten your time to hiring. New advancements in recruiting technology, like resume parsing software, have been created to automate recurring, time-consuming chores.

Enhancing communication is another significant area for CX development. Email automation and AI-powered chatbots have proven helpful for initial outreach and rediscovering talent in your existing dataset.

1. AI-powered resume screening

Resume screening is a critical component of HR process automation. The process entails screening the candidate resumes and assessing the information about them, like education, skills, and experience, to analyze whether the job applicant is a good fit for a particular position.

By speeding up the candidate screening process, recruiters can reach out to candidates much faster and improve hire quality.

The advanced AI screening software can help you find the perfect fit-out of a pool of hundreds or even thousands of candidates. What's more to it? 

RChilli's configurable data fields feature promotes unbiased recruitment and helps you locate competent candidates during the screening stage by omitting demographic information such as gender, race, and age.

The number of job applications for Recruit Genie's clients increased by 250% with our innovative screening tool.

2. Recruiting chatbot

Do you know what spoils the job seekers' experience during the recruitment process? No communication! Candidates expect HR managers to be more communicative and responsive in conveying the interview results. Sometimes, it is not possible. Therefore, the chatbot takes over the task of communicating with the candidates.

Chatbots understand and analyze user words and provide an instant pre-programmed response. They are available on various websites that require interacting with candidates. 

How do chatbots help in recruitment? When it comes to high-volume hiring, they communicate with the candidates at scale, answer FAQs about the company or job, perform an initial candidate screening, and notify recruiters about following up with qualified candidates.

One of our clients, impress.ai, required structured data from resumes for their chatbot to ask relevant questions to prospects. RChilli resume parser rapidly converted unstructured data into structured data by extracting resume data into fields such as experience, education, skills, etc.

3. Search and match engine

Imagine uncovering the best talent a tenth of the time by matching candidates with job openings! Is there a technology that makes this happen? Sure, there is – RChilli's advanced search and match engine.

The search and match engine speed up the recruitment process with similar resumes and matching jobs recommendations. It provides the following matches:

1. Resume to Jobs- It brings more job recommendations to the candidate.
2. Job to Jobs - It brings similar job recommendations matching a specific job position.
3. Job to Resumes- It brings more candidate recommendations for a job position.
4. Resume to Resumes- It brings similar candidate recommendations matching a particular resume.