A recent study of recruiters found that nearly 90% of them believe that we are in a candidate driven market. In conditions like these, having a strong candidate experience is essential, since the top candidates have more options than ever, and might easily be put off by a frustrating application process.

Especially now that information about companies is less difficult to find, whether that information is positive or negative. It's as simple as a Google search, or a quick Glassdoor look up. You can be sure that if a candidate has a negative experience while applying for your company, others will hear about it. In fact, almost 70% of candidates would consider sharing a bad candidate experience with their network. On the other hand, if your business is able to build an experience to write home about, it'll boost your online reputation.

Why is a front end important, how does it improve the candidate journey and experience?

The front-end is, defined simply, the part of your recruitment process that your candidates will be interacting with. Especially in an online context, this means your website, your application portal, and any online adverts that potential recruits might see. If your business is using conversational chatbots to keep candidates updating on their process, how well they can answer questions is also part of the front end of your candidate experience.

When improving your candidate experience, the front-end is like the icing on the cake - you can have a talent attraction process which is well thought out and efficient, but if it isn't presented well to candidates, they might not ever try it. Driving conversion rates requires making sure that each stage of your candidate experience is frictionless - from filling in forms to finding important information about the position.

Why is candidate experience important?

As an example of how important getting the candidate experience is. Did you know that in 2014, when the Virgin Media recruitment team didn't give candidates the best interview experience, a survey of applicants post interview found that around 18% of them happened to be Virgin Media subscribers, and some of them were actually cancelling their subscriptions because of their experiences!

It's less likely for your business that applicants will be customers, but take this event as an example of how a poor candidate experience can leave a bad impression, not just of your recruitment process but your brand in general, amongst potential candidates and their networks. 65% of candidates state that a poor interview experience can sap their interest in a job, so even if you've managed to get a top candidate to the interview stage, you can still lose them if you don't put more focus into creating an exceptional candidate journey. You want your candidate experience to boost your brand and create interest in your company via word of mouth.

How a positive candidate experience can help increase conversion rates

Every business looking to be at the top of its industry will want to hire the best applicants, and even when these applicants know your company's record, a bad candidate experience might cause them to extrapolate that there are further problems with your company. If you lose these candidates, you risk lowering your conversion rates, and therefore also risk damaging your ROI.

A positive candidate experience should also be accessibility focused. You should create a great candidate journey for everybody, including people who are differently abled. This is especially important when considering whether or not to have online interviews - 86% of organisations switched to virtual interviews during COVID, and it might be worth retaining them to allow flexibility for those who have childcare or other care responsibilities.

Making sure that the online application process is mobile friendly for those who don't have access to a laptop (or simply prefer to use their phone) will also make sure that you don't lose out on good candidates.

Do you want a top tier front end for your hiring? inploi will work hand in hand with your team, to give your business a best-in-class candidate experience, optimising your recruitment spending and making sure that your vacancies are filled more quickly. Our application processes are seamless, and will make it easy for your candidates to submit their information and stay updated on their progress with chat bot apply flows.

Get in touch to learn more.