Building a Talent Ecosystem Around the Candidate Experience
Mac & Fulton Talent Partners
M&F Talent offers recruiting services for agriculture, food production, and related technologies.
Introduction
The goal of recruiting and HR strategy at any organization should be to create a talent destination. Talent destinations are those companies known for their ability to attract, hire, and retain top candidates by prioritizing positive candidate experiences. The best way to turn your organization into a talent destination is to refine your recruitment strategies and interview methods until you create a positive inflow of qualified candidates.
A well-organized HR department is the cornerstone of any talent destination. Your HR team should provide oversight on things like interview SOPs, job descriptions, and fair hiring practices. Your HR team should work with hiring managers to create a smooth, efficient, and effective hiring process.
From startups to established corporations, it can take a lot of work to remain organized with a high volume of open jobs. Yet, every touch point of your recruiting and hiring ecosystem impacts the candidate experience. To attract the best talent in your respective industry, it's important to take a critical view of your entire HR strategy.
The goal of this report is to explore different ways that your recruitment function impacts the candidate experience. In turn, following the details covered in this exploration, you can better refine your talent ecosystem to improve your overall hiring situation.
Table of Contents
1. What is the Candidate Experience?
2. Developing Your Talent Ecosystem
3. Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
4. Communication Platform
5. Clarity on Job Duties & Requirements
6. Well-Written Job Descriptions
7. Compliance with Recruitment Practices
8. Interview Preparation
9. Online Interview Portal
10. Structured Interview Questions
11. Adapting the Application Process for Different Positions
12. Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring SOPs
13. Keeping an Active Pipeline with Feedback
14. Conclusion
15. About Mac & Fulton Talent Partners
What is the Candidate Experience?
According to Recruiting.com: “The candidate experience is the series of interactions that a job seeker has with your company throughout the recruiting process. These interactions include any communication that a candidate receives from your brand messaging, software systems and/or employees.”
Especially when you are extremely busy, it's easy to lose focus on how your hiring strategies and HR infrastructure might impact new applicants. Nonetheless, you must communicate well with candidates and respect their time throughout the interview process. Negative reviews on platforms like Indeed and Glassdoor can eventually hinder your ability to attract and retain top talent.
Since they signal potential issues with your organization, negative reviews are damaging first impressions that deter leading candidates. According to a recent Indeed article, “45% of workers named online company reviews as one of the most important factors in the job offer decision.” In a world where peer review sites like AirBnB are king, your online reputation is intimately bound to how you treat applicants in the hiring pipeline.
When candidates talk about having a positive experience with your businesses, it creates a positive ripple effect with other leading professionals in your industry. As more people hear good things about your business, it leads to more inbound applicants. With more qualified candidates knocking on your door, you can greatly reduce time-to-hire, while also beating your biggest competitors to the punch.
Developing Your Talent Ecosystem
For many organizations, the process of building a talent destination starts with dismantling your current hiring and rebuilding it from the ground up. Since every touchpoint you have with candidates is important, you must consider how your HR infrastructure (or lack thereof) impacts your ability to support a functional recruitment and hiring ecosystem.
You might not realize it, but very basic implementations like applicant tracking systems (ATS) and inter-organization communication platforms impact the overall candidate experience. In essence, the more organized you are internally, the better the impression you will give qualified candidates in the field. If your team is on the same page with your recruitment initiatives, it will be very evident when it comes time to contact qualified candidates.
Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
Applicant tracking system (ATS) software is a great tool for keeping tabs on open jobs and candidate submissions.
With an ATS, your HR department, hiring managers, and executive leadership can quickly check the status of any open jobs. They can also see where candidates are in the hiring pipeline, while also reading notes from HR departments and recruiters about calls, emails, and interactions with these people. This rich data lays the foundation for personalized interactions that leave lasting impressions on top candidates.
According to Workable, an ATS “benefits businesses by automating and organizing the hiring process. It improves collaboration, reduces time-to-hire, scales hiring pipelines, [and] enhances employer branding.” Even better, an ATS gives you the autonomy to manage your own pool of applicants independent of job boards and competitors.
A functional ATS is the key to keeping in touch with passive candidates that you can tap into for future hires. When you start a new job search, you can search your own ATS for passive candidates before looking on job boards, etc. ATS software will keep resumes organized and searchable for keywords, skill sets, locations, and more.
The longer you maintain your ATS, the larger the qualified talent pool you will have to choose from. In time, this pool of passive talent will be the very fabric of your recruitment ecosystem.
Communication Platform
An inter-organization communication platform like Slack is a great way to keep everybody in your organization on the same page. You can avoid emails getting lost in the shuffle by sending people Slack messages directly. It’s also possible to create groups with different team members for different topics like hiring pipeline, employee benefits, candidate experience, etc. Employees can set their status to “Active” when available and “Away” when not at work.
When your team communicates well with one another, it will be evident to the most astute and detail-oriented candidates. Especially with executive search, the most in-demand candidates are turned off by having to answer the same questions with each phone call or interview. At the same time, you can use good communication as a differentiator among competitors by keeping one another updated on the fine details of the interview process - or even filling one another in on interesting tidbits about a candidate’s background, hobbies, and life goals.
Clarity on Job Duties & Requirements
Before posting on a job board or starting a search with a recruiter, it's best to be 100% clear on critical information like salary, job duties, experience, and language requirements. If you don’t have all this information clear at the outset of a search, it can wreak havoc on your hiring pipeline. Not only will your HR and recruitment team waste time locating the wrong candidates, but changing duties and requirements mid-stream frustrates candidates and slows down the entire hiring process.
Once again, it's essential to take a critical look at your own HR and recruitment functions before heading out into the field to contact candidates. If your HR team and hiring managers aren’t on the same page about job duties and requirements, it will only diminish the candidate experience in the end. Not to mention, the more time it takes your organization to fill critical positions, the more it will hurt your bottom line.
As M&F Talent explains in a recent blog titled How to Reduce Time to Hire: “Not only does efficient hiring give you a competitive advantage in the market, but it also improves the candidate experience and your overall employer brand. Especially when it comes to executive search, you need every possible factor on your side to find the right person.”
Well-Written Job Descriptions
Many people don’t realize it, but job descriptions (JDs) are marketing documents that advertise your company among relevant candidates. Every JD that your organization produces should follow your brand guidelines. Including additional elements like logos and mission statements can go a long way in making your company seem professional in relevant talent pools.
Since JDs leave powerful first impressions on applicants, you should treat them like client-facing documents. Your JDs should be well-written and reflect the requirements and qualifications of the position in question to the best of your ability. Ensuring there aren’t any grammatical errors is essential for looking professional in the field. Even more, if qualifications are clearly laid out in your JDs, candidates will trust there won’t be any “surprises” on the job after they start.
A professionally-crafted JD is the first signal to a new applicant that your organization will provide a stable and fruitful career path.
Remain Compliant with Your Recruitment Function
Before you publish a JD on a job board or share it with a candidate, it's important to walk through hiring criteria with your HR department. While hiring managers know the exact details needed for candidates to succeed in their jobs, that's not the whole picture if you are trying to grow your organization. Your HR department should give you guidance on what criteria can legally be used to hire or reject candidates, while also helping you craft competitive compensation packages.
According to Forbes, “Several U.S. laws regulate and define discrimination in hiring, including the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Equal Pay Act (EPA), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).” Needless to say, overstepping any of these important labor laws can be extremely damaging to your organization’s reputation.
Compliance applies to more than just JDs, you also need to consider how your interview process might impact potential candidates. Forbes adds, “Because of laws prohibiting discrimination in hiring, HR compliance requires careful oversight of questions prospective hires are asked in job interviews. Your hiring managers should steer away from any questions that directly seek information about protected classes.” It’s important to avoid any lines of questioning that could be mistaken as discriminatory - such as age, religion, family plans, or sexual orientation.
Once again, a poor review on a site like Glassdoor that labels a business as discriminatory will do lasting damage to your organization.
Interview Preparation
When candidates are surprised or unprepared for interviews, they tend to get more stressed out about the process than the actual interview. That being said, giving candidates an outline of what to expect when interviewing at your business can go a long way toward creating positive experiences and making better hires. Helping applicants understand what types of topics to focus on can also make a big difference - while also giving you a clearer glimpse of their personality.
A common mistake among hiring parties is to put candidates in high-pressure interview situations without proper preparation or support. When this happens, Indeed explains, “As an interviewer, you might find it difficult to get a clear picture of a candidate’s other skills and qualifications” if they put all their focus on dealing with the pressure of the moment.
A good way to support candidates is to provide an interview preparation packet. Again, you want to show people that your business is the type of place that they want to work. When a new candidate enters the hiring pipeline, an interview preparation packet can lay out everything they should expect when engaging with your business - including different steps in the interview phase, personality tests, as well as a bit about the people who will be conducting the interviews.
Online Interview Portal
Another tool to consider implementing to boost the candidate experience is an online interview portal. If you want your candidates to go through an extensive screening process, having everything housed together in a single branded website/portal will give the impression of professionalism.
Asking candidates to go through a rigorous screening process is one thing, but it's important to give them support in doing so. For example, they shouldn’t have to figure out where and how to record and share a pre-screening video. Asking candidates to shoulder this type of burden can damage your reputation in the long run.
Popular choices for online interview portals today include:
Having an online portal where candidates record videos, take personality tests, and turn in other materials will result in a more streamlined and professional hiring pipeline. Simply because, you are helping candidates shoulder some of the busy work that comes with applying for one of your jobs. When applicants feel better cared for during the interview and hiring phase, it gives them faith they will also be taken care of if they are hired.
Structured Interview Questions
Developing uniform interview questions for different roles at your organization will help standardize the hiring process.
If every candidate is interviewed differently, you will have a hard time comparing them objectively since the context of each interview is unique. As Forbes explains, “Discussions that lack structure can fail to gain insights into a candidate's ability to manage responsibilities and excel. Not only can this leave job seekers with a poor brand experience, but interviewers can also fall victim to confirmation bias.” However, if you approach each interview in the same way, you will get a solid read on how different candidates react to the same questions or workplace scenarios.
Pre-written interviews also help keep emotions out of the interview process and avoid potential conflicts of interest for interviewers. Finally, pre-written interview questions give you the ability to better prepare candidates on what to expect when they enter the hiring pipeline at your organization.
Change the Application Process for Different Positions
Especially for large companies with many job openings, it's important to change the application process for different positions. Candidates of different career levels have unique expectations, methods, and tolerances for applying and interviewing for jobs.
A good point of comparison would be a sales rep versus a sales director. An entry-level sales rep would expect to fill out an application and submit an introductory video as one of their first steps in the interview process. Conversely, skilled sales directors who are in high demand will likely go cold by having to take such rudimentary steps right off the bat.
While written applications or pre-screening questions might serve utility when filling several lower-level positions, they often don’t make sense for senior-level roles. If you want to use pre-screening steps for higher-level jobs like managers, it's better to establish relationships with these candidates before asking for anything extra. After mutual interest is established, it's more tasteful to have them do things like take personality tests. Otherwise, you will likely lose good candidates to competitors because of a clunky interview process.
Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring SOPs
Recruiting, interviewing, and hiring SOPs are essential for creating scalable processes in your HR department. Once you future out systems that work, you should develop them into SOPs so they are recreated across your organization. For example, you might create different application SOPs for entry-level, mid-level, and senior-level jobs.
An SOP for the recruitment process ensures a structured, fair, and efficient approach to hiring. It enhances transparency, reduces risks, and streamlines the entire hiring process. As such, SOPs are one of the most powerful tools for providing quality candidate experiences with your recruitment function.
With SOPs in your recruiting department, you can train an internal recruiter to follow the exact parameters set forth by your organization. The goal here is to make your HR department and recruiting function scalable so everything is routine and there is no more guesswork in the process. So when you have a new open job, your whole team knows exactly what to do to get it filled in a timely fashion with a quality candidate.
Keeping an Active Pipeline with Feedback
Clear, timely, and respectful communication helps reduce uncertainties, making the recruitment journey smoother and more engaging for candidates. When you have active candidates in your pipeline for open positions, you must keep them warm and interested. This is another place where interview SOPs can play an important role in keeping your recruiting function on track.
For example, it's a good policy to give all candidates feedback within 48 hours of an interview taking place. In like fashion, giving candidates regular updates as to the search progress is a great way to keep them engaged and interested. Finally, your HR team should be clear on who exactly will be giving candidates feedback once the application process has begun.
If you are unable to give objective feedback on why you decided to reject a candidate, you should likely reconsider your choice. In the end, you should only reject candidates if they don’t meet your hiring criteria. To this end, using guidelines like “not getting a warm fuzzy feeling” on a candidate will not help you make quality hires.
Remember, every candidate you deal with deserves feedback after an interview or phone call. Even if they are rejected for the job, candidates must walk away feeling their time and skills were respected.
Conclusion
Transforming your organization into a talent destination requires a strategic approach to recruiting and HR practices. Perhaps more than anything, this means keeping the candidate experience at the front of your mind at all times. By building a talent ecosystem around the candidate experience, you will ensure a steady stream of qualified applicants knocking at your door. As you revise strategies like recruitment SOPs and interview guidelines, it will only make your hiring pipeline more efficient and functional moving forward.
Each touchpoint in your recruiting and hiring ecosystem impacts the candidate experience, underscoring the importance of a comprehensive HR strategy. Remember, if you hope to hire top talent who can transform your business, the interview process is a two-way street where both parties vet one another. To outpace the competition, you mustn’t give quality candidates any reason to walk away.
About Mac & Fulton Talent Partners
M&F Talent is a professional search firm that offers recruiting services for agriculture, food production, and related technologies. By blending hard-won expertise with a personable approach, M&F Talent creates a unique experience for clients and candidates, fostering lasting relationships and repeat business.
Contact [email protected] to learn more.
