Exactly what is the business impact of a poor candidate experience? According to the latest global Talent Board research, 41% of your candidates will take their allegiance, product purchases and brand relationships elsewhere because of it. They won’t apply again, they won’t refer others and they won’t buy your stuff. That could equate to millions of dollars in revenue for consumer-based businesses (like Virgin Media’s business impact work and the dozens of companies that have won our Candidate Experience Awards based on having the highest candidate ratings in our survey research) and potential eventual lost revenue due to not having the referrals needed to grow the business.
On the other hand, because of a positive candidate experience, 64% of job seekers (including those who don’t get hired) will increase their relationships with your brand and your business. That’s the potential revenue upside. Especially since the majority of the candidates surveyed via Talent Board research are rejected candidates.
How’s that for business impact?
So, how do you know for sure whether you’re delivering a great candidate experience or a lousy one? The same way you know your organization’s other key performance indicators—by measuring it.
Measurement Isn’t Optional, It’s Essential
Measuring your candidate experience requires more than mirror-gazing and self-scrutiny. Today, the companies delivering award-winning candidate experiences go directly to the most reliable source of objective insights: candidates themselves. These companies gather feedback from every candidate who goes through their recruitment processes, whether they’re hired or not.
Collecting this feedback takes a dedicated investment of talent acquisition professionals and the right feedback technologies—and a willingness to smash the status quo with a strategic consumer-based approach to recruiting. One company living up to these demands is Wells Fargo, a four-year CandE award winner.
Wells Fargo launched its Candidate Experience Program in 2015 to deliver a best-in-class job seeker experience. According to Program manager, Kelsie Johnson, this meant ramping up both the volume and frequency of candidate feedback. During a recent Talent Board webinar she stated, “Until you hear directly from your candidates, you really don’t know what their priorities and opinions are or what they want from your organization. You might think you know, but you don’t.”
The company has taken a three-phase approach to gathering more—and more continuous—feedback:
- Phase 1—It’s now surveying internal and external candidates who are not These individuals share information about every step of their experience—from initial attraction to the online application to communication and follow-up.
- Phase 2—It’s now surveying all news hires and internal transfers. This is a single survey applied consistently across the entire organization to determine how employees feel about their new job fit, their overall satisfaction with the recruitment process, and areas for improvement.
- Phase 3—While Wells Fargo does currently survey its hiring managers, the process isn’t yet consistent companywide. That’s what this phase will focus on when it launches in the months ahead. By improving its hiring manager survey process, the company will have a truly comprehensive view of opinions regarding its candidate experience.
By gathering all this feedback on a continuous basis, Wells Fargo has improved its ability to:
- Give job seekers the experience they want, including a more robust mobile job application process.
- Measure the ROI of specific candidate experience initiatives.
- Prioritize new candidate experience projects to be in sync with job seekers’ actual needs and desires.
“Wells Fargo is now reaching out to and gathering feedback from 30,000 to 35,000 candidates per month,” Johnson said during the webinar. “That’s a staggering amount of information but it’s important in helping us determine our Program’s focus, not only for the rest of this year but for the coming years.”
The Benefits of Measurement Abound
Wells Fargo clearly illustrates the business benefits of measuring your candidate experience. And to say that you’re just not ready to measure yours means that you could be missing out on key talent via loss of referrals and lost revenue due to a poor candidate experience you may not even be aware of.
There are other benefits to measuring your candidate experience by participating in the Talent Board CandE program including the ability to use the information you gather to: 1) benchmark your company’s recruiting processes and candidate experience against others; 2) receive formal recognition for your candidate experience by possibly winning a CandE Award based on your candidate ratings of their experience with your organization; and 3) share and receive best practices in Talent Board research, symposiums, awards galas, webinars, podcasts and more.
How many referrals and how much revenue will it cost you before you start measuring candidate experience so you can improve it? It’s never too late to start and Talent Board is here to help.
You can still participate in the 2017 Talent Board Candidate Experience Awards and Benchmark Research. Find out how today. And if you’re interested in learning more about how Wells Fargo transformed its candidate experience, just click on the preceding link to watch the brief webinar.
Photo Credit: sergeitukach Flickr via Compfight cc
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