One of the most popular Talent topics that I came across during my travels to different Talent Acquisition and technology conferences last year was candidate experience. Whether in Europe, United States, New Zealand or Australia, candidate experience would rank amongst the top 3 focus areas.
Therefore it seemed timely that the Talent Board recently announced the 2018 Candidate Experience (CandE) Award winners for APAC and EMEA. Congratulations to these recipients, and to all those who participated in the research.
It was always interesting to speak to organisations about the CandE awards and learn their reasons for participating. But I thought what was even more interesting was the reasons people gave for why they DID NOT participate.
- “We just know” – many claimed to know they had an issue but didn’t actually have data to prove it. What they had was anecdotal evidence from word of mouth or the odd email, OR
- Not enough resources to commit to the research, OR
- Did not have the budget to participate, OR
- They had other priorities they were focusing on, OR
- There were concerns around privacy/GDPR.
Sounds familiar? I believe that these organisations are missing out on the perfect opportunity to get a measure of their hiring processes. Need further convincing? Here’s how:
1. Employers can access qualitative and quantitative data throughout the candidate experience journey. This data can then be used to support a business case for whatever it is you need. It could be additional resources, new technology, recruiter training, a small or large business improvement project budget, or a larger marketing budget. You can now focus on where in the process things can be improved. For example, you may have thought the bottleneck was the initial application stage, but now you know it is the offer process creating you more headaches.
2. With Talent Board’s technology partner Survale, employers are now able to benchmark themselves against industry, and award winners (consolidated data). More data to draw upon when hiring managers are getting critical about your efforts to find them the right people.
3. CandE Award winners are able to promote themselves publicly, identifying themselves as candidate focused, potentially luring more high-quality applicants who can see that you are more focused on candidates than perhaps your competitor.
We are talking about a little investment of time and a one-time annual registration fee that costs less than a return economy airfare from Perth to Melbourne to participate. It’s a low cost, high value return on investment which based on my experience in the Talent Acquisition sector is rare to find.
Participating in the Talent Board’s Candidate Experience (CandE) Award is a two-step process – the Employer Survey and the Candidate Survey.
The Employer Survey consists of questions about the participating organisation’s business and recruiting from pre-application to onboarding, and a little about what technologies they were using or implementing.
If you have good reporting, this data gathering would take you about 15-20 minutes. To complete the survey, probably another 15-30+ minutes depending on how many team members need to be involved. Once this survey was completed and based on the data received, the organisation may then qualify to participate in the Candidate Survey. Participants could elect to only complete the Employer Survey.
The Candidate Survey is a little more involved for the candidate in terms of questions being answered, although for 2019 it will only take candidates 5-10 minutes to complete. Talent Board will provide the email templates and links for organisations to email their candidates (Talent Board does not email the candidates directly, removing the concerns around privacy).
Candidates complete the survey anonymously and those surveyed should include rejected candidates as well as those who have been hired. Live survey data will be made available via the Survale platform, Talent Board’s technology partner.
Organisations who score the highest points will be awarded the CandE Award.
The excuses above just don’t hold water if you are serious about the candidate experience, and more so about finding the right Talent by giving yourself a competitive advantage. I highly encourage everyone to get involved.
To get a copy of the APAC 2018 Candidate Experience Research Report, pre-register here.
If you are looking for further information on the 2018 Research or keen to participate in the 2019 Research, drop me an email at stan.rolfe@thetalentboard.org or visit the website for updates on workshops and webinars taking place this year.
Cover image: Talent Board
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