6 ways Workable helps you create a great candidate experience
Candidate experience is growing in the overall conversation when it comes to the hiring process. Along with salary, benefits, location of work, the nature of the work itself, who you’re working with, and so on, the experience of the overall recruitment process for a candidate hugely influences their decision whether or not to pursue a role at your company.
In fact, it’s often the candidate’s first impression of your company and can impact your reputation as an employer for better or for worse. Right now, Workable’s data shows that job openings are going through the roof and candidates are at a premium – making it a candidate’s market. So, the onus is very much on you to ensure that your hiring process is a positive experience for every candidate.
Luckily, Workable’s applicant tracking system can help you do just that. Let’s look at six ways in which Workable’s features make a great first impression for your employer brand.
1. Keep candidates informed
A common gripe of candidates is that there’s a lack of communication throughout the hiring process – in other words, they feel like they’re being “ghosted”. In fact, 77% of jobseekers say they’ve been ghosted during the jobhunt according to a 2021 Indeed study.
Why is this important?
How do you feel when someone stands you up? Not very good, I’ll bet. That’s how candidates feel when you don’t keep them in the loop during the hiring process. That’s going to come back to bite you because they’ll share those negative candidate experiences throughout their network.
Suddenly, dozens or even hundreds of other candidates may think twice about applying for a job with your company. That’s not a good thing, especially when the Candidates Per Hire trend is lower than ever before. You need every candidate you can get.
How Workable helps
We get that you’re short staffed and your hiring team is overburdened with other work commitments. That’s why our Automated Actions function can be useful for you – you can set up automated emails to go out at different triggers in the hiring process. For example, an email goes out when an application is first filled out, an interview is scheduled, or even when a candidate needs to be informed that they aren’t being moved forward to the next stage.
Our in-app texting capabilities come in very handy as well – the ability to send and receive quick text messages are a boon for both candidates and the hiring team because it’s much easier to answer questions and address concerns right on the spot.
2. Put power in the hands of the candidate
Much of the time, the stages of the recruitment process – including schedules, communications, etc. – are dictated by the hiring team, not the candidate. For example, a “don’t call us, we’ll call you” situation is telling the candidate to go and sit in the waiting room until you’re ready to bring them in with an update.
Why is this important?
That puts the candidate in a powerless situation, which can make them feel dehumanized or undervalued in the hiring process. Much of that dehumanization comes from lack of control in the hiring process. Instead, give candidates some trust and power as you work with them.
If you make the process more of a two-way street, giving candidates the ability to schedule interviews and interactions in a way that fits their schedule and keeping the channels open for their feedback, that speaks volumes for what they’ll think about you and the role going forward. They’ll be thinking, “Wow, this company does care about me as a person. Could be a good place to work, after all.”
How Workable helps
While our Video Interviews feature may seem counterintuitive to this as it’s a one-way video interview process, it’s actually the opposite – you’re giving the candidate the freedom to complete that stage of the process at a time and place that works best for them.
Likewise, our self-scheduling functionality gives candidates the power to choose whatever time works best for them for an interview of any kind, be it with a recruiter, a hiring manager, or an executive. This is especially powerful when the candidate is already working and you don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable by scheduling a time during their workday.
3. Speed up the hiring process
The hiring process, of course, takes time. You don’t want to rush to a job offer – you want to be sure you’ve evaluated all the potential great hires who’ve applied to your roles, and then discuss internally about which ones to move forward on and which ones ultimately get the job. But there’s a flip side to doing all that – it lengthens the time to a job offer.
Why is this important?
Right now, it’s a candidate-driven market. That means candidates have the luxury of choosing jobs rather than jump through hoops to land that dream position. The Time to Fill trend is also dropping steadily every month and has been for a long time now. And 81% of candidates actually expect the whole thing to wrap up within two weeks.
If you make them wait longer than they’re willing to wait, guess what? Your candidate drop-out rate will increase. And it’ll also reflect poorly on your employer brand because, as stated earlier, they do get together and share horror stories about their jobhunt experiences.
How Workable helps
Again, the self-scheduling and asynchronous video interview tools are huge here. There’s a lot of time spent in the back-and-forth communications trying to find a good time for a conversation – especially in the screening stage when the pipeline is at its widest. That can be easily avoided with the self-scheduling option.
Likewise, one-way video interviews not only give candidates the opportunity to contribute something right away on the spot and – if you’re working on location – cuts down on any unnecessary commuting time for the candidate. And because they’re recorded responses, video interviews can also be reviewed at any time by any member of the hiring team – even during evenings or a lunch hour on the phone.
Plus, because you can centralize all communications in a single place in Workable’s ATS, you don’t need to chase opinions and feedback for days on end or spend resources and time trying to bring everyone together into the same room. Everything is contributed in one place, in written form, giving the opportunity to manage the recruitment process asynchronously between members of the hiring team.
4. Manage it all remotely
We live in this brave new world (which is seemingly renewing every month) where remote work has become standard practice. In fact, Workable’s 2020 survey found that the shift to remote work would be one of the biggest paradigm shifts coming out of the pandemic – and it’s true. Remote work is here to stay.
Why is this important?
This development has been welcomed by candidates with open arms. The focus on remote work has evolved into an overall emphasis on worker flexibility both in schedule and location – and companies will need to adapt to that. This includes adapting the hiring process to this new reality.
How Workable helps
Workable’s ATS has full end-to-end remote capabilities and every aspect of it – including signing contracts, assessments, background checks, and more – can be conducted virtually. This is a fantastic first impression for candidates who will appreciate the efforts by your company to ensure fully remote capabilities throughout the process.
5. Ensure a bias-free experience
We are humans; therefore, we’re subject to bias. It’s usually not deliberate – in fact, it’s unconscious in many ways – but it does lead to a selection process that favors some candidates over others based on personality, race, gender, age, and many other elements that affect hiring decisions.
And again, because we are humans, we can’t always count on ourselves and others to mitigate this bias. We need to standardize the process through technology.
Why is this important?
Biased hiring is rampant, and despite the work put into mitigating it, it’s still a problem. A lack of precautions sends the wrong message to the candidate, and also results in a less diverse workforce in your company – and in your leadership – that will be plainly visible to the diversity-conscious worker. Neither are good for the candidate experience.
How Workable helps
Our Assessments tool standardizes testing and scoring for personality, emotional intelligence, problem-solving, and critical thinking. This gives you a more objective, measurable perspective on a candidate’s soft skills to help you make a better decision on those hard-to-gauge elements of a candidate’s qualifications for a job.
Anonymous candidate surveys are also a valuable tool to track the demographics of candidates through your hiring pipeline. This gives you the opportunity to identify stages where bias may occur and rectify them.
Workable places a huge value on DEI initiatives, and we take that into account when designing our software. Have a look at the ways in which we can support your diversity, equity & inclusion goals.
6. Showcase your employee experience
Candidates often research companies before they decide to apply – and they’re especially interested in what it might be like to work for you before they start talking to you. This includes mission/vision statement, product/service, org structure, benefits, interview process. It’s the first impression that a candidate has of you and can set expectations going forward.
Why is this important?
It’s important in a number of ways. First, this enables the candidate to decide to apply based on what they learn about your company – and therefore save them time (and yours) if they decide your company isn’t the right fit for them.
Second, if they do decide to apply based on what they’ve learned, that frees up the time you’d normally spend on trying to sell a candidate on the job during a screening call or an interview, thereby speeding up the process.
How Workable helps
Jobseekers will go looking for your careers page when looking for a job, and that crucial first impression can make or break it for them. This is your opportunity to promote everything about what it’s like to work in your company.
Workable’s Careers Page Builder feature gives you all the tools you need to throw together a great careers page from scratch – and without requiring any real design expertise to boot. You can include your company mission and vision, describe your product/service, describe your organizational structure, share information on compensation and benefits, embed employee videos, and even details on the expected interview process.
Interested in learning more about how Workable can help you build a top-notch candidate experience? Give our ATS a free 15-day spin or request a demo with one of our representatives.
