The experience job candidates have with your organization’s recruiting process can affect your employer brand, costs and even your revenue.
In my book, Hack Recruiting, I disclosed that Virgin Media first learned of the revenue-damaging impact of rejected candidates when it began to survey rejected candidates in 2015. The company discovered that 18 percent of their rejected candidates were customers. Worse yet, six percent of the roughly 7,500 candidates were so angry with the poor recruiting experience, they switched to a Virgin competitor, which was estimated to cost the company £4,4 million in lost revenue.
A 2016 study by LinkedIn uncovered that the cost of a bad reputation for a company with 10,000 employees could be as high as $7.6 million in future wages. As well, employers who failed to invest in their reputation could be paying up to an additional $4,723 in costs for each employee hired, as the hiring process takes longer mostly due to job candidates dropping out.
Despite all the pre-pandemic research on the cost of poor job candidate experiences, the problem continues this year, even with the use of Applicant Tracking Systems (APS0) that can automatically communicate job applicant status to the candidate.
In 2024, only 26 percent of job candidates are satisfied with the recruiting process, according to Aptitude Research. Poor communications is one of job seeker’s biggest complaints during the recruitment process. Sadly, 65 percent of job candidates haven’t received consistent communication through the recruitment process.
Aptitude Research’s survey also discovered the following:
- 36 percent of candidates were still waiting one to two months for the next steps after they applied.
- 35 percent of US job seekers said an employer failed to acknowledge their application altogether. (I find this an incredibly inexcusable oversight since almost all of today’s applicant tracking systems can send out an automated email acknowledging receipt of an application. )
- Only 42 percent of candidates were told what would happen next by recruiters and followed up as promised.
- 40 percent of job seekers said they were ghosted after a second or third-round interview.
- 47 percent of candidates said poor communications would cause them to withdraw from the recruitment process, which includes no updates on the application status and not responding to messages.
There is plenty of good news for employers with a positive job candidate experience. Aptitude Research found that companies with a positive candidate experience are:
- Three times more likely to improve employee retention
- Two times more likely to improve employee performance
- Two times more likely to improve their Net Promotor Score, that is the percentage of all job candidate who will recommend applying to the company’s job openings.
This data makes it clear that investing in a great job candidate experience, for those you hire and turn down, creates long-lasting benefits, such as an improved company reputation, reduced costs, improved revenue, and not to mention hiring top notch job candidates.
How do you get started?
Below are simple steps to improve your candidates’ experiences:
- First, set clear communications standards for recruiting job candidates.
- Make sure your APS instantly sends an automated message acknowledging receipt of the application.
- Tell all candidates within one week of the status of their application and next steps. If you know of another job a rejected candidate would qualify for, please inform them.
- Answer candidate messages on the same day.
- Second, change your application processes to “one-click” for submitting a LinkedIn Profile or resume, and keep any additional questions to a handful of legal ones.
- Third, use structured interviews and aptitude tests to improve your ability to identify great talent and reduce biased decision-making and legal risks. Learn more here.
- Fourth, have the recruiter interview within two weeks of the application.
- Five, have the hiring manager and others interview within two weeks of receiving the recruiter’s recommendation (and keep the candidates informed on their status in the process).
About Victor
Victor Assad is the CEO of Victor Assad Strategic Human Resources Consulting and Managing Partner of InnovationOne, LLC. He works with organizations to transform HR and recruiting, implement remote work, and develop extraordinary leaders, teams, and innovation cultures. He is the author of the highly acclaimed book, Hack Recruiting: The Best of Empirical Research, Method and Process, and Digitization. He is quoted in business journals such as The Wall Street Journal, Workforce Management, and CEO Magazine. Victor has partnered with The Conference Board on innovation research. Subscribe to his weekly blogs at http://www.VictorHRConsultant.com