Every time I present at a workshop or a conference, I remind all the TA professionals in the room that they spend lots of money on job advertising, employer branding, and recruiting technologies. By some estimates, midsize organizations can spend between $150,000 and $450,000 annually, while large enterprise organizations can spend between $750,000 and $3,500,000+ annually, or more. That covers recruitment marketing to onboarding and is a big annual investment for companies.
And yet, job candidates don’t care (unless they’re in the HR/TA industry).
Job candidates only care about one thing: getting the job. And most, on average, won’t get the jobs they applied for.
But everything an employer invests in for recruiting and hiring directly and indirectly impacts the overall candidate experience and candidates’ perception of fairness, which can ultimately impact the business and the brand positively or negatively.
We have 15 years of candidate experience research and case studies that validates all of this (2026 CandE Benchmark Research Reports and new case studies coming in early January).
Every time I present at a workshop or a conference, I always keep it interactive (because I love learning from attendees). One thing I do is ask them to describe their employer brand in one word. Usually I hear mostly positive words like:
- Inclusive
- Empowering
- Empathetic
- Authentic
- Purposeful
- And many more
But when I ask them to describe their candidate experience in one word, historically I’ve heard:
- Chaotic
- Vague
- Unresponsive
- Impersonal
- Bland
- And many more
However, that’s been changing in the past year. Anecdotally, I’ve heard more neutral-to-positive words describing employers’ candidate experience, aligning more with their employer brand.
Which is how it should be in any candidate market, if TA teams are doing the work of improving their recruiting and hiring practices for candidates, as well as the recruiters themselves and hiring managers.
For the past few years, candidates have told us when they’re researching employers and jobs, they’re looking for more information about the following (besides salary and benefits):
- Company Values
- Company Culture
- Why Employees Work There
- Why Employees Stay There
- Employee Testimonials
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Career Path Opportunities
- Flexibility / Remote Work
- The Application and Next Steps
This year, when employers provided more of this defining information, their candidate journey research NPS rating in our benchmark data increased by 54%.
That’s a big increase and important for the employers trying to attract people, for the candidates who ultimately apply, and for the candidates who decide to not apply because maybe it’s not the place for them, and they had the information to make an informed decision either way.
Again, TA teams spend lots of money on job advertising, employer branding, and recruiting technologies.
But they can’t fix a poor candidate experience alone. It’s up to TA teams to better understand their recruiting strengths and weaknesses, their candidates’ perception of experience and fairness, and to improve upon and optimize their candidate journey.
All the time. There is no ideal static state where one-size-fits-all from pre-application to onboarding will make the near-term and long-term business differences. Change is painfully constant and the continuous optimization of recruiting and hiring will impact the business and brand for the better. And that means more talent attraction, more referrals, more brand advocates, and more customers for consumer-based businesses.
***
Now, for a little self-promotion and gratitude…
“Kevin has run the most-used candidate experience benchmark in the industry for years. If you want evidence rather than opinion about how candidates are treated, it usually traces back to his research.”
While I love that quote from the team at Happydance about me, in regards to their list of the Top 50 employer brand leaders around the world, it’s not “my” research per se. It’s the recruiting and hiring industry’s research.
15 years ago, Gerry Crispin, Elaine Orler, and Ed Newman launched a candidate experience benchmark research program to help employers improve their recruiting and hiring processes for all candidates.
Known as “The CandEs” over the years, the mission had always been to elevate and promote a quality candidate experience around the world. We’ve worked with over 2,000 employers with dedicated TA teams and surveyed 2 million candidates to date.
I’ve always been a candidate experience advocate and volunteered early on with the CandEs, and eventually ran the program, which I still do today as part of Survale, Inc, the purpose-built talent experience survey platform.
We continue to be relentlessly focused on candidate experience and its impact on employer brand and business (as well as recruiter, hiring manager, and employee experiences). That’s why I’m honored and grateful to be a part of Happydance Careers Websites’ list of the Top 50 employer brand leaders around the world.
Each person is scored out of 100 on five pillars, experience, achievements, influence, thought leadership and community, using public, linkable evidence rather than votes, follower counts or payment.
Gerry Crispin is the Hall of Fame inductee at #50. Well deserved.
Definitely couldn’t have done it without the Survale team and Mr. Ron Machamer. As well as collaborating with Adela Schoolderman on our candidate experience book.
Blessings to everyone helping to elevate and promote a quality candidate experience!
