4 Secrets to Creating a Great Candidate Experience
Welcome to Recruiter QA, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you'd like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter QA!
Today's Question: As a recruiter, how do you give your candidates great experiences? What is your trick, tip, or secret that produces the best results?
1. A Call From the CEO
To create the best hiring process possible, our first touch is always a call from me, the CEO. From the start, we want to make sure that there's a top-down fit with every new hire. It saves both parties far more time and resources when we only vet and interact with highly qualified candidates who also gel with management.
��� Garrett Mehrguth, Directive Consulting
2. Focus on the Candidate's Needs
The best way to give a candidate a great experience is to make the process about them and their search. Ask them what they are looking for in their next move and deliver opportunities that match their criteria. Be their advisor, not their scheduler. Build trust by providing insight into the job market and what it takes to get a killer job while using active listening to understand your candidate and show you care. Do what you say you're going to do, and do it very well. Your candidate will begin to see you as a more of a career coach than a recruiter, and that's when you know you've succeeded.
��� Cameron Weller, Betts Recruiting
3. Work Around the Candidate's Schedule
Top performers are busy, and for them, time is money. That means our recruiters have to optimize the time they spend with these people and do so in a way that doesn't infringe on the candidate's ability to meet their sales targets. We do this by scheduling interviews and discussions around the targeted candidate's schedule. This means scheduling interviews during lunch, early morning, or late evenings, if necessary. Whatever works best for them is what works best for our team.
��� Keith Johnstone, Peak Sales Recruiting
4. Communicate Often and Honestly
Throughout my almost two decades in talent acquisition, I have found that authentic communication with the candidate through the whole recruiting cycle is the key to success. (It also resonates well with one of the seven core values that we follow here at kCura, which is "Be an excellent communicator.")
In a feedback-driven culture, we provide all candidates, regardless of our hiring decision, with candid feedback about their strengths and areas for improvement. In the end, we see that it plays so much better than sending out impersonal notes about selecting another candidate "whose skills and experience more closely matched the position."
��� Matt Garvey, kCura