Ben Gledhill begins his presentation referencing the EMEA CANDEs report into the state of candidate experience in 2018. The good news is that poor candidate experience is down, but the bad news is great candidate experience is also going down. 50% of people are walking away from your organisations having had a great experience, in comparison to 63% in 2017.
Ben dives into statistics around why candidates withdraw from your recruitment processes, from company culture and the false promises of luxury – to the need to be more strict and accurate in repurposing job descriptions to job adverts. In 2020, we still have candidates dropping out of the assessment process because hiring managers disrespect their time at interview stage.
What is the damage being done to your employer brand?
If we look into how candidates rate their own experiences the CANDEs report states that 74% of candidates with a positive experience will share it with others, whereas 55% will share their negative experience with others. If over half of the potential candidates you put through your various hiring processes share their negative experiences with your company, it can have a detrimental impact towards your employer brand.
So, why is this the case? Ben believes there is a massive disconnect between what recruiters think candidate experience is, and what candidates think it is. The experience candidates get in their consumer environments sets out an expectation and a hopeful replication of the candidate experience journey.
There is only a finite amount of time within recruiters day-to-day, should we be looking at giving more time to the overall ‘recruiter experience’? If the recruiter does not have enough time to do their day job, they can’t be expected to be delivering great experiences to candidates within the recruitment process.
During Ben’s time at Yodel, he looked at automation and expectation within their recruitment process. Initiatives with a lack of time, and analysing the candidates application times, he developed Emma, a chat-bot designed to assist parts of the process that can provide the first touchpoint to a great candidate experience.
Finally, Ben shared his Candidate roadmap, and his RAG chart of candidate experience, to hold accountable and to give back to recruiters in order to be able to deliver and match the expectations that candidates already have, prior to application.
You can find Ben’s roadmap here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/candidate-experience-roadmap-v2-ben-gledhill/
Ben Gledhill (Head of Resourcing @ Yodel) Since entering the Talent industry in 2006, Ben has always wanted to make a difference and positively impact the lives of many. Many years later, as a proven Talent Acquisition Leader, he has led and developed both centralised and remote teams with a focus on performance, delivery and experience. He believes in the creation and adoption of a “hiring culture” through coaching, influencing and educating all members of an organisation; strategic, tactical and operational.