The article “Feedback to and from candidates will improve your hiring process” by Roy Maurer, highlights the importance of providing feedback to job candidates throughout the hiring process. This feedback can help employers improve their candidate experience and ultimately polish up their employer brand. The article suggests that soliciting feedback from candidates at crucial stages of the hiring process can reveal the strengths and weaknesses of that process, which is the first step toward improving it. According to Danielle Weinblatt, founder and CEO of ConveyIQ, the biggest complaint by candidates is when they apply for a position and do not hear back. She believes candidate pooling is ok as long as employers are upfront about it.
Candidate feedback surveys are standard, but the article suggests that there is a lot of bias in those polls because frequently companies are not conducting them across the right sample group or comparing them across the organization to see areas for improvement. The ideal survey is one that captures as many qualities about the candidate as possible without revealing the identity of the individual. Employers should ask more open-ended qualitative questions like “If we can improve anything about our hiring process, what would it be?” and “Describe your ideal hiring experience.”
Hiring metrics should be analyzed in conjunction with candidate feedback surveys to best understand candidate experience. It’s easy to correlate why candidates drop off at the application stage if you have a 40-minute-long online application. The offer-to-acceptance ratio is a good indication of the overall state of a company’s candidate experience in conjunction with the competitiveness of the industry or that specific role. Finally, it is important to measure hiring manager performance at each stage of the process, as candidate feedback may show that the breakdown in communication lies with a certain hiring manager.
In conclusion, employers should strive to provide feedback to candidates throughout the hiring process and solicit feedback from candidates at crucial stages to improve the process. Open-ended surveys that capture many qualities about the candidate are ideal. Hiring metrics should be analyzed in conjunction with candidate feedback to best understand candidate experience, and measuring hiring manager performance at each stage of the process is important.