Why manage Candidate Experience?

For the good recruiters handling candidate experience is a natural talent. Some thing they do as part of the recruitment process with or without being conscious of it. A great candidate experience helps the recruiter in more than one way.

Better Screening
First of all, the candidate opens up more than he/she would usually do. So recruiter gets to know more about the candidate, his needs and aspirations, strengths & limitations, hot buttons or even red flags and this gives a better insight of the candidate. This helps the recruiter know whether the candidate suits the role or not.

Better Offer Negotiation
Powered with this information recruiter can better engage the candidate. This would be of tremendous help during process delays or offer negotiations or notice buy out or competing offers etc.

Employment Branding
Another advantage is that the candidates who had pleasant experience are more prone to spread the word around about the recruiter, the opportunity and the company even if they don't get selected. The employment branding piece remains intact or perhaps even gets added mileage due to the positive image being spread around.

Networking
Happy candidates will give recruiters more referrals and get you introduced their peers. This way every new candidate recruiter gets in to touch with and creates a positive vibes can expect to have his network increase by many fold.

Comment by Darrin Grella on October 6, 2009 at 12:36pm: A good friend of mine explained how he evaluates companies or opportunities. For whatever reason, it stuck with me. He suggested that there are 3 things, Profit, Process and People. Usually in that order.

As recruiters, we are in a people business but we are also here to make a profit right? The unfortunate thing is we tend to put profit and process ahead of people, which is usually the candidate. Good post, I wonder if we changed our outlook on where people fall on that scale if our profits would be better? hmmmm.

Thanks Kiran.

Comment by Hassan Rizwan on October 7, 2009 at 3:09am: A great piece of information for all of us. It's good to have candidates who act as a mouth piece for the recruiters for their sevices. All of this is backed up by the good conduct of the recruiters, good assessment system which helps candidates to know about themselves even if they dont get selected. Can act as a differentiator for the recruiters in the market.

Comment by Pedro S. Silva II on October 7, 2009 at 11:13am: At my company, JCSI, my title is Candidate Relationship Manager. So I focus on how we can better the candidate experience as a company. What drives this is simple. Candidates are customers regardless of whether the engagement results in a fee paid. Like Einstein said, "Not everything that counts can be measured and not everything that can be measured counts." Numbers were created to be a tool for us to use, not a master for us to be used by. When we are controlled by numbers, their increase equals our decrease. We become lessened by more. Thanks to Kiran for adding to us with his post.

Comment by Mervyn Dinnen on October 18, 2009 at 11:40am: Two thoughts spring to mind -
1) Today's candidate is tomorrow's client
2) You can tell a lot about a business by the way it goes about recruting it's own staff

Both are true and both would indicate the importance of giving great candidate experience. The unfortunate truth though, is that too often the sales model favoured by almost all recruitment businesses rarely rewards for building strong and effective candidate relationships unless a sale results. Until we find a way to reward for experience, ther will be too many missed opportunities.

Comment by Lesley Hardy on February 8, 2011 at 12:49pm: Candidates are our customers to. Whether we buy their services or not, they remember a good experience. I still have relationships with candidates from years ago and if I need some information, I know I can ask them, or they will refer me to others.

I totally agree with your points Kiran.

Comment by Joseph P. Murphy on February 8, 2011 at 4:17pm: Kiran

Great set of 'extra value' points from managing the candidate experience. I tend to cringe a bit on the phrase "natural talent", as it minimizes the concept of skillfulness, skill development and skill transfer.

Delivering a great candidate experience can occur on two planes - the interpersonal level and the digital level. A lot has been written about the quality of the human interaction. Less has been devoted to the digital candidate experience.

Here is an article that invites us to think about the skillfulness and intention that goes into the digital candidate experience.

Three questions about your candidate experience