Today’s labour market is highly competitive and recruiters are facing a global skills shortage. By prioritizing and optimizing the candidate hiring experience, companies can set themselves apart.

But what does candidate experience in recruitment really mean and why is it important?

Candidate experience is the feeling candidates have about a company after they go through the hiring process. By optimizing the experience, you can promote fairness and accountability in the recruitment process. This ultimately influences how job seekers view your brand. The business impacts of optimizing the candidate experience are significant.

If you don’t have candidate experience top of mind, you are losing out on talent, referrals, or even new business.

What are companies that provide a high level of candidate experience doing differently?

The Talent Board hosts the Candidate Experience awards each year. Here companies compete to elevate and promote equity in their recruitment process against industry benchmarks. According to their 2021 Talent Board Candidate Experience report, top companies:

1. Hold Recruiters to a Higher Standard: Recruiters are likely the only contact candidates have with your brand until they meet with the hiring manager. Introducing more automation into the recruitment process can free up recruiters' time to work more efficiently, thereby improving the overall candidate experience.

2. Improve Fairness with a Structured Selection Process: Providing consistency and structure across different recruitment stages is key. If there are delays in communication or discrepancies at the selection stage, candidates may start to doubt your objectivity. Having structure in your interview process can improve perceptions of fairness and giving feedback to finalists can improve their overall candidate experience.

3. Share Timelines across all Stages: Candidates want to know if their application is moving forward, what stage of the recruitment process their application is in, and when they can expect an offer. Timely updates demonstrates empathy towards the candidate, thereby shortening your time to hire.

What does Jarvis do to optimize the candidate experience?

At Jarvis, our team provides a strong candidate experience in the following ways:

1. Collecting Feedback: We encourage feedback from those involved in our recruitment process. This includes surveying both contractors and consultants to assess their experience throughout the recruitment and onboarding process. Note, candidate experience doesn’t stop the moment that someone is hired. We review the feedback each quarter to optimize candidate experience in our recruitment process. From our recent survey in Q3:

   • 98% would recommend Jarvis to a friend looking for a new role

   • 97% found their recruiter helpful throughout the whole recruitment process

   • 95% felt that the Jarvis onboarding process was simple and efficient

2. Support with Job Readiness: Jarvis takes the guesswork out of what candidates can expect when applying for an entry-level position or technology job with no experience. We offer a 3-4 month mentorship and technical training program and provide connections to industry experts. The program is tailored towards career mentoring, personal development, and providing networking opportunities. Learn more about what to expect when being matched to a client as part of the Technical Consulting Program.

3. Host Appreciation Events: We recently hosted an appreciation barbeque and holiday event for our program graduates to celebrate and recognize the hard work that they put in every day.

Providing a quality candidate experience ultimately improves your company’s recruiting efforts - impacting your bottom line, brand, quality of hire, and time to hire. At Jarvis, we are immensely proud of the level of candidate experience that we provide each day.