The experience of an applicant is crucial

The experience of an applicant during application procedure by organizations will become crucial in the coming years, especially in a tight labor market when the vacancies will soon be difficult to fill. "Therefore, it is smart to invest in the Candidate Experience," says Veronique Oonk from Intelligence Group.

Experience of candidate is crucial

Several factors determine the experience of a candidate with the employer, Oonk says: "Strictly speaking, it all starts with the first contact with company during recruitment (job fairs ) or the visit of recruitment page of company’s website. It is all part of Candidate Experience. But to a large extent is Candidate Experience is the answer to a question: "How would they treat me if I actually apply?" It is too sad for words, but most of applicants will not even get a response when they apply for a job, let alone why they are rejected. "

What should we do with 500 responses to a job?
"Of course I know that it is not always possible to give a response. If you cannot handle such a large flow of applications, adjust the job description in such a way so that only max ten but suitable good candidates would apply. This prevents the notorious roam that the company doesn’t treat the applicants proper enough and it makes no sense to apply with you. "

Applicant Referral
In the end all what matters is that candidates talk positively about your company, even if they are rejected. "Then they could apply again themselves for a different role, or they could encourage others to apply for a job with your company. All this becomes really interesting when you need to fill really difficult vacancies. Because when you have a bad image, it will become even harder for you to fish the right people in the pool with little fish.
You should also see the rejected applicants as consumers. If they had a bad experience with your company, they are more likely to buy a product from your competitor in the future. "

America and the Netherlands
In the Netherlands we usually pay relatively much attention to employer branding, in any case more than the USA, where recruitment happens more through sourcing agencies. It's a waste of money if you pay little attention to the incoming responses. "If you do not keep the beautiful promise that you made, it leads to sever image damage. In the United States, they are much further with taking care of this problem. Annually conducts The USA a massive research. Only in 2013, for example, 90 employers were taken under the loop and more than 64,000 applications were investigated for the Candidate Experience."

Preparation
Intelligence Group did in 2013 in the Netherlands, a study among 830 applicants. This showed that the preparation of the employer for the interview has the greatest effect on the Candidate Experience. If the employer does not really know who they are interviewing, this has a mega negative impact. It is too embarrassing f or words, but 88 per cent of candidates feel that the recruiter/ hiring manager didn’t look deep enough into his case: his experience/personality/ etc. Naturally, it has a negative image of the employer at the end of the application process.

Expectation Management
The expectation management is also extremely important, if not crucial in the employment branding. Clarify how the process works and keep your promises. ' Contact within short period of time always builds a good experience. However the expectation management is much more relevant in this case. Thus you build a relationship of trust. A candidate, who knows that he is applying for a popular position, also understands that it may take longer before a response. The important thing is that this reaction also occurs at the agreed time.
KEEP that promise. "

Source: P&Oactueel