How to Improve the Candidate Experience in 2021
Candidate experience is one of the most important aspects of the hiring process. A bad candidate experience can negatively impact your brand and even discourage high-quality candidates from applying to a role.
The hiring process is a chance for you to emphasise why every candidate should want to work for your company. Showcase your values and highlight your employer brand.
With the ongoing events of the pandemic hiring processes have moved online. Therefore, offering a good candidate experience is now more important than ever. To help with this, we’ve listed below our top tips on how you can improve the candidate experience in 2021.
- Keep Communicating
You may have heard this time and time again, but it still remains true. The main challenge that moving your hiring process into a virtual setting presents is the ability to communicate.
Whilst remote hiring has occurred pre-pandemic most interviews happened in person. Having lost that physical interaction as part of the hiring process, it can make it harder for yourself and candidates alike to decide whether they are a good fit for the role.
To resolve this, it is important to keep communication lines open. In this ‘new normal’ where starting a new job means interviewing and onboarding remotely, communication is key. Remember to clearly communicate your expectations for the role and working environment during the hiring process. Communicating effectively with candidates, even if it’s just to say that no decisions have been made, is crucial for keeping candidates engaged during the hiring process.
- Pre-Assess Candidates Prior to Interview
Pre-assessing candidates will not only ensure that you are taking only qualified candidates to interview, but it will also reduce the time to hire, improving the experience for candidates and increasing your competitiveness.
However, technically assessing software engineers can take valuable time and resources away from the day-to-day activities of your engineering team. So why not let someone else do it for you?
Geektastic is a technical assessment platform that uses a team of highly skilled engineers to evaluate your candidates code. As opposed to algorithms, peer assessed activities allow you to test not only a candidate’s technical ability but also specific software skill sets.
And that’s not all; Geektastic go one step further to help you improve the candidate experience with their 360 degree code review tool. Which allows candidates to respond to the reviewer’s comments and questions. Feedback provides additional insight into the candidate’s soft skills and can be carried out in close to real time. Speeding up the hiring process for all parties involved.
Find out more about our partnership with Geektastic here.
- Support your Candidates
It can be difficult to support candidates throughout the hiring process when working in a virtual setting. Alongside communication it is essential to still provide that element of a ‘human touch’, so that candidates stay engaged.
Sending personalised emails is an easy and effective way to ensure candidates feel supported throughout the hiring process.
Moving online has also highlighted the importance of social media as a touchpoint during the hiring process. Using your social media platforms to communicate with potential candidates about your company culture and values, perhaps even providing interview advice is just another way to offer a good candidate experience.
- Ask for Feedback
Our final top tip for improving your candidate experience in the coming year is to ask candidates who have gone through the process for feedback.
Establishing an effective way to virtually hire and onboard candidates doesn’t just occur overnight. It may take time and re-evaluation to ensure that candidates are getting the best experience. Receiving constructive feedback from candidates if one way to ensure that this happens.
If you are looking to hire talented tech professionals, speak with our specialist consultants today.
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