Resourcing top talent: why does great candidate experience matter?

In this age of information and technology, much of the world has moved online for essential tasks such as shopping, networking and job-hunting. This shift in behaviour of our prospective employees, customers, clients and top industry talent needs to be at the forefront of our approach as a brand.

It is widely recognised that customers who have a bad experience with a brand, product or company are twice to three times more likely to leave a negative review[1]. A LinkedIn survey found 27% of candidates who had a negative experience would “actively discourage” others from applying for a job with that company[2] .

How we approach recruitment of staff for our business and how candidates interact with our brand should be foremost in our minds as employers. Their experience, both online and in person, should be both positive and consistent in order to continue being an attractive place in the market. The goal should always be to represent who we are and our organisation’s culture in all of our interactions with prospective employees.

Word of mouth - a historically key part of brand strength and source of recruitment - has evolved with the times. As we have seen with the likes of TripAdvisor and Glassdoor, word of mouth has not reduced in importance but merely moved online. In resourcing and recruiting new staff, we should look to convey our brand and culture in the same way we would advertise a product online. A prospective employee’s first stop will be a company’s website or social media pages to see what we put out into the world regarding what we do, who we are and what we consider important to us.

Being relatively new to Cundall, my first impressions are that this is truly a people-led organisation. Being partner-owned has also helped retain a family feel and culture as the organisation has grown. Cundall relies heavily on relationships (with clients and each other) and collaboration across time zones, locations, projects, offices and sectors is key to our success. These are the things about an organisation that interest candidates: what’s not in the job description or the job advert they’ve seen on Linkedin? Why is this a great place to work?

A candidate’s experience throughout a recruitment process is taken as a reflection on the culture of the business, what it’s like to work there, the people, service. This is, after all, the candidate’s first interaction with a person from the organisation beyond our online presence and footprint.

As we enter the post-pandemic world, there are more documented job vacancies online since records began. Candidate experience and candidate care are more important than ever to get right every time. This candidate-driven environment provides top talent with multiple job and employer options to choose from - in this close market of talent, we can’t afford to be anything other than excellent.

We also need to take a long-term approach to ensure that, regardless of whether a candidate is successful or accepts an offer with us today, we want them to remember us in a positive way. Care and communication throughout their recruitment process is key to ensuring our candidates talk about us in the market and to their peers and colleagues with positivity and affection.

If we want to be thought of as a brand and employer of choice, we must convey that family culture in all practices and processes, starting with recruitment.

The graduates of today are the engineers of tomorrow and the senior and principal engineers of today are tomorrow’s industry leaders.

Remember, a bad review is easy to come by but hard to shake.

[1]Why are Angry Customers More Likely to Post a Bad Review? - Online Reputation Management
50 Stats That Prove The Value Of Customer Experience (forbes.com)
[2] The true cost to business for poor recruitment process | HRExecutive.com