We are witnessing a mass movement of organizations beginning to use candidate experience feedback to optimize their recruiting capabilities. This new movement is already begging the question: Will your candidates find the same focus on high levels of satisfaction with their employee experience?
It had better. If not, all the gains organizations have made optimizing recruiting with candidate experience feedback will be offset by higher levels of attrition. Organizations looking to increase their ability to get top talent must use the same strategies to retain that talent and maximize their engagement and productivity.
Candidate Experience Feedback Impacting Employee Experience
A big reason why so many organizations are using candidate experience feedback to optimize recruiting is that the expectations of candidates have changed. They expect better from potential employers and with record low unemployment, they have the leverage.
When looking inside the enterprise, why would anyone expect that existing employees would not have the same attitudes? Of course they do.
Recruiting departments have a huge role to play in bringing candidate experience feedback into the enterprise and impacting employee experience. As HR has spent much of the last decade trying to measure and impact employee engagement (with little to show for it), recruiting has been focused on improving candidate experience. And from our vantage point, they have a lot to show for it.
All these candidates who have been both surveyed and served in new and more effective ways during the recruiting process will end up in the enterprise as employees with higher expectations. And the recruiting function that’s successfully solved the candidate experience issue, will have not only the feedback but the data to support how improved candidate experience can translate into improved employee experience and how much it can impact productivity and engagement.
Continuous Feedback
The key to using feedback to identify and optimize talent facing facilities, people, processes and programs (employee experience) is making sure that it is continuous. Running employee experience surveys once a year and expecting to get real data that can open doors to real improvement is almost useless.
Have we not learned this from decades of failed performance management?
Annual equals old data, incomplete data, data from the last two weeks only, etc. Employee experience happens every day, not once a year. This is where the recruiting department is starting to get it right when it comes to candidate experience and it is crucial for optimizing employee experience.
When candidates run into problems, whether online or at an interview or with an offer, not only do you know about it, but you can fix it for them now and in the future.
Same for employees. By implementing simple ways to provide real time feedback, you get two huge advantages. One, you can address it in a timely manner. Two, you’ve demonstrated that you care about your employees and you are engaging them in the process of optimizing their experience.
In other words, just asking is half the benefit. You want engaged employees? Then engage them.
Artificially Barriers Between Candidate and Employee Experience
The reality is that candidate experience should flow into employee experience. Candidate and employee experience are both tightly related and they both provide compelling benefits. In reality, I would throw customer experience into the same bucket. In many industries, the relationship between customer, candidate and employee is highly symbiotic at present, and can be improved with strong focus.
The holy grail of business success is when customer, service, product, brand and vision are all tightly aligned. And when you marry feedback from customer, candidate (often candidates are customers), and employee together, you will know everything you need to know in order to attract and retain the talent you need to deliver the benefits the customer desires most.
All of this is possible with modern tools that automate the process of gathering feedback from candidates, employees and customers. Technology provides a solution as long as organizations start to understand that feedback from each segment needs to work together to form an integrated experience that works for the business, the customer and the talent.
