I attended #HRFestAsia in Singapore recently and noticed a rising trend – employee experience.
It is awesome to see the focus on improving the employee experience. The benefits hopefully will be returned in the form of increased attraction, retention, engagement, productivity, leading to a vastly improved bottom line.
Employee experience on its own, however, will only help employees. You have to get them to become employees first! To do that, you need to improve the much neglected candidate experience, because both candidate experience and employee experience are definitely connected.
Why does candidate experience matter?
Well much like the benefits of employee experience, a positive candidate experience provides the same benefits.
Your candidates are more likely to be more engaged and productive on day one. More likely to refer friends and colleagues to you, and more likely to increase their relationship with the company whether that be buying more products or services or promoting/advocating your company’s products and services.
When was the last time you applied to a job in your own company and experienced what a candidate experienced? Based on that experience would you want to refer someone? What were your first thoughts about the process? Is the technology hindering you, or is it your process?
Gaining a 360-view of your candidate experience
I spoke to numerous delegates at the conference and a small percentage of them said they are surveying candidates. A great start, but what exactly are they benchmarking themselves against, and who are they surveying?
Whilst I applaud the fact they are attempting to improve, doing so with just hired employees provided only one perspective.
Talent Board through its candidate experience research program enables employers to better understand the gaps in their recruitment process through the eyes of the candidate. The research is conducted anonymously, is benchmarked against other organisations, and the kicker, its low cost.
Every time someone asked me about the cost to participate and I told them it was a mere USD$500, it was followed by a clarification – “You mean per survey completed” OR “per user” OR “based on X number of employees”.
NO, it is a low, one-off annual fee and with that you get access to the survey platform, a company specific report based on your data including a one on one review, and the ability to compare it externally. Strange how the biggest objection I was met with was the low cost, not the value with participating in the research.
Which is why it is important to note the minimal overall investment versus the overall big return.
The overall total investment is minimal:
- $500 registration fee
- 3+ hours of total time for employers
- 5+ minutes of total time for candidates
And the overall total return is big:
- Survey methodology and candidate targeting resources
- API integration available to distribute via Survale if needed
- Candid anonymous feedback from targeted candidates
- Confidential and anonymous aggregated benchmark data
- Access to all benchmark data via secure Survale account
- 1-on-1 data review to understand overall business impact
- Access to industry peers and experts on candidate experience
- Employers with the highest positive candidate ratings to receive public industry recognition and a CandE Award
But wait there’s more! Will having data to make a business case for more resources, or improved technology be of interest? Well, now you will be able to through our research program.
A poor candidate experience is costing you. It’s time to make that change and register for the 2019 APAC Candidate Experience Research Program.
This article is contributed by Talent Board.
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