Employer brand: boost your candidate experience

For several years, candidate experience has become a major component of human resources and a essential element in the recruitment processes. It not only guarantees the candidate retention, but also acts as a lever for your employer brand.

What is confirmed by the 69 experts who helped us get the keys to a attractive employer brand.

By downloading this free guide you will get:

• Feedback from 69 employer brand specialists
• The 4 main attractiveness factors
• Recommendations by type of business

Download the free HR guide: How to boost your attractiveness?

In addition, if your candidate experience is not satisfactory, you could risk losing valuable talent and even damaging your company's image. This is precisely one of the challenges of this theme, so What can you do to improve your candidate experience ?

Through this article, we are going to deliver to you 9 tips to offer your future employees a quality candidate experience.

1 - What is candidate experience?

Candidate experience, also called candidate experience or recruiting experience, refers to all interactions, emotions and perceptions experienced by a candidate throughout the recruitment process in a company. This experience begins with the search for a job offer and ends with the final decision of the recruiter, which is a longer or shorter period depending on the number of stages in the recruitment process. Hence the importance of 3.0 recruitment tools like inbound recruiting. You need to seduce your candidates as if they were customers.

2 - What are the challenges of the candidate experience?

The experience lived by candidates is a crucial element for the success of any recruitment process. Indeed, it can have an impact on a candidate's perception of the employer brand and influence your decision on a job offer.

Thus, a positive candidate experience can boost the motivation of candidates, attracting top talent, increase employee retention rates and improve an employer's reputation.

Conversely, negative feelings can damage an employer's brand image, discourage individuals from applying, and in the future, lead to Increase in turnover staff. The candidate experience is therefore decisive.

3 - How to improve your candidate experience?

If you want to boost your candidate experience effectively and sustainably, here are our 9 tips to follow:

3.1 — Structuring your recruitment process

The first step to improve your candidate experience is to structure your recruitment process at an early stage, this being made up of 7 phases according to us. The aim is to clearly define the steps by detailing the deadlines to be respected for each of them.

These must be well thought out in order to ensure a good organization of applications, but also a good feeling from candidates.

In the same vein, it is essential to know who to call in internally during this hiring, but also to ask yourself about the number of interviews necessary for the position. Thanks to this, you will be able to save valuable time.

3.2 — Take care of your announcement

Writing a job offer may seem trivial, but this step is nevertheless essential. Its reading will very often coincide with the first impression that a candidate will make from your company. A perfect job ad has 4 components:

• An impacting catchphrase;
• A dynamic and realistic presentation of the company as well as the expected work missions. The aim here is to make you want, without overselling the position to be filled;
• Announce in a clear and concise manner the stages of your recruitment process, as well as the various contacts that the candidate will meet;
• Give a pay range.

Regarding the length of your ad, the content should ideally fit on one page in a standard writing format.

Once these elements have been applied, your job offer can be published on various media such as your career site, existing job boards or on online social networks such as LinkedIn.

Communication on these media should be a way for you to strengthen your visibility and attractiveness by sharing a clear and positive message about your employer brand.

To stand out, use our article on best job ad hooks.

3.3 — Offer a smooth journey

Recruiting as well as being recruited can be time consuming, which can discourage some candidates. That is why it is essential to make it easier for them by offering a smooth path, trying as much as possible to reduce wait times.

For exchanges, try to be as flexible as possible by adapting the tools (videoconference, telephone call, physical interview...) to the context of recruitment and to the technical and geographical possibilities of the candidate. The most important thing is that regardless of the location, the candidate feels comfortable in this environment.

Regardless of the type of interview you have chosen, the main thing is to communicate with candidates in the most pleasant way possible but also in the most appropriate way. A certain flexibility and modernity in your communication channels will reflect a modern image of your company.

3.4 — Use gamified assessment tools

Some companies have chosen to combine business with pleasure by using innovative ways to recruit Like the new generation assessment tools. Indeed, in addition to helping them in decision-making, by evaluating the skills of candidates in a more objective and scientific way, they make recruitment more enjoyable and original (to learn more about originality, discover our article on How to recruit in an original way).

There are various forms of fun assessment on the market. The most traditional formats consist of logic tests, quizzes or even 2D mini-games.

After several years of R&D with researchers in Psychology and Neuroscience, we imagined Yuzu : one New Generation Assessment Center, specialized in the assessment of soft skills (the famous soft skills).

With Yuzu, talents are immersed in scenarios developed with the latest technologies of the Video game.

The evaluations, on the other hand, are accessible to all profiles thanks to simplified orders and cloud technologies (all you need is a computer and an internet connection to be evaluated).

Transform your candidate experience with Yuzu

The advantages of our solution:

• One candidate experience exceptional to boost your employer brand ;
• A solution accessible to all to ensure equal opportunities;
• A decision support tool to detect and promote interpersonal skills.

Whether it's for your recruitment process Or of internal mobility, we are transforming the assessment of Soft Skills in a strong and fun moment.

3.5 — Maintaining regular and personalized contact

However, even with the most efficient tools on the market, you should prioritize moments of exchange with your candidates. Indeed, it is essential to keep regular contact and personalized in order to establish a good relationship and build a relationship of trust.

To achieve this, remember to communicate regularly about the status of their application but also to keep them informed about the next steps in the recruitment process. Transparent and proactive communication is a guarantee of success to allow candidates to feel valued and respected.

We do not recommend that you write emails that are fully standardized to all applications, without a small touch of personalization. So, a simple effort to add something specific to the person to your template can change how a candidate feels about you.

Our advice: to save time in your recruitment while ensuring a good candidate experience, we advise you to have a High-performance ATS. If you don't know which one to choose, don't worry, we've written an article about it with The methods of HRDs to choose their recruitment software.

3.6 — Provide feedback

Coming from English, feedback represents constructive feedback, and more generally the criticisms or recommendations that can be made on a subject. In the case of a recruitment process, it's about keeping candidates informed of your decision.

In addition to the usual contact, it is essential to pay particular attention to unselected applications. Indeed, whether the applicant is hired or not, responding constructively can improve your candidate experience and therefore your employer brand. So be thoughtful when telling them the news.

It is never pleasant not to follow up on an application. It is even worse to be refused a job, especially without knowing the reasons. You must then take this into account and provide candidates who apply with advice on how to improve, answers to their questions, etc. Your objective should be to Reassure them by explaining to them why your selection did not focus on them.

In some cases, you can even advise them or try to Make your network play, to recommend them and invite them to join a company you know. These little touches will make it easier for candidates to let go of their disappointment. In some cases, it's even appropriate to keep them in your talent pool for future opportunities.

3.7 — Preparing a quality onboarding

As for the selected candidates, the strategy does not end there: the first day your new talent arrives in your structure, you will have to receive warmly by remaining attentive to his needs. The better he arrives, the better your chances of keeping him in your company so that he can have a career there.

Conversely, poor integration into a team could change the mindset of new collaborators, and in the worst case, they could get off to a hasty start...

Therefore, preparing for the integration of new employees is of paramount importance. We advise you to support your new employees by offering, for example, a Welcome booklet Or a team building activity (team building and cohesion). These tools will allow him to integrate more quickly but also to successfully take up a position.

Our advice: do not hesitate to set up regular meetings with your new hires to be able to adapt the onboarding phase as best as possible.

To learn more about this stage, an entire article has been dedicated tointegration of a new collaborator and it even contains an integration questionnaire.

3.8 — Offer a welcome pack

In addition to the previous point, you can offer your new recruit A welcome pack. It can contain goodies or small key objects to reinforce their sense of belonging and their adherence to your business.

It is also an opportunity that can allow you To assert your corporate culture and your values. For example, at Yuzu, we give a lemon tree to every new employee!

3.9 — Request feedback

Do not lose sight of the fact that behind each application there is a Real person and that these are the best placed for you provide quality feedback about your candidate experience.

It is therefore necessary to follow up to communicate with everyone and get their feedback. To achieve this, you can Suggest surveys or quizzes. This data will be a great help in understanding what is working and what is not working, in defining trends, etc. Without this feedback, you may be missing out on valuable elements for improvement and missing out on the chances of make your recruitment even better.

To remember

For several years, The candidate experience is a major recruitment issue. It has even become one of the key actions in the successful talent recruitment. Hence the interest in devoting time and money to optimize it because obviously, the performance of your recruitments will result from it.

As you will have understood, working on your candidate experience is very important. To ensure its success, it is crucial to put in place effective practices:

First, it is essential to structure your recruitment process by taking care of its announcement. The information provided should contain all the necessary details so that candidates are not undecided when applying to your company.

Then, the challenge is to offer a smooth journey by using modern assessment tools (cf. Yuzu) and by maintaining regular contact with your candidates. By evaluating the soft skills of your potential future employees, you will not only make your final choice more informed but you will also be able to identify their areas of predilection.

And finally, we recommend that you provide constructive feedback to all candidates whom you will have to refuse. This will prevent them from having a bad memory, and you will be able to stand out from the mass of recruiters who leave their candidates unanswered. You can then concentrate fully on the integration of your lucky ones.

All you have to do is follow these tips to the letter so that your candidate experience matches your talents.

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