Improve your candidate NPS

What are the foundations of a positive candidate experience?

A quick bit of context. Mike advocates that crafting a great candidate experience (CX) is crucial for building a strong employer brand and ultimately attracting top talent.

The topic of CX can however feel a little broad. Mike has defined four foundational pillars, this set of core principles that set the direction for his teams candidate experience focus.

Transparency = Providing clear information about the job, the company & the process.

Responsiveness = Communicating promptly with all candidates and keeping them informed.

Fairness = Treating all candidates with equity and ensuring a bias-free evaluation process.

Ease = Ensuring the application can be easily navigated and is accessible to all candidates.

When improving a process, Mike has it clear which of these pillars he is optimising for. With that in mind here are 3 examples of CX improvements:

1. Writing what a job isn’t on the advert

Generally Mike writes a job advert with a ‘minimum requirements mentality’ finding that candidates generally prefer shorter job adverts.

As an alternative to long requirements, he found adding a section on what the job is and the job is not was better received by allowing candidates to more easily self-select.

2. Don’t assume the optimal feedback channel

Effectively sharing feedback with candidates, even when it involves delivering unwelcome news, is a crucial indicator of the strength of a candidate experience process.

Though time-consuming, Mike chose to deliver feedback via phone calls. Offering a personal approach and detailed insights surely improved CX right?

Actually when surveyed, candidates for certain roles showed a strong preference for feedback via email. This allowed them to absorb at own pace, no discomfort of live conversations as well as other benefits detailed below.

I personally loved how Mike is willing to question his own assumptions by collecting data-points on what candidates actually want.

3. Prepare the interview team

Mike aims to treat interviews with the same care and preparation the sales team would for a prospect demo or customer call.

Intention + organisation + care = positive & respectful candidate experience.

This means preparing the interview team (and making sure they prepare for each interview too). Below is a template Mike sends to each interviewer to enable them in this process:

Measuring doesn’t need to be complex

To round-off, I wanted to share how Mike generally collects candidate feedback, in short, he keeps it simple:

1. A 1-10 scale to collect NPS

2. An open box for written feedback

This approach keeps response rates high, creating a more representative data-set.

I hope these steps were useful! In the full course we cover end-to-end process design to optimise CX, more details on accessing that plus 40 other mini-courses below.

Interested in learning more?

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