Even in a job market favoring employers, there’s no room for companies to deliver a poor candidate experience. Besides missing out on great candidates, a bad candidate experience reflects negatively on your company, and can result in poor reviews on career sites like Glassdoor. Even if a candidate isn’t the right fit for a position, they should still come away from the interviewing process with a positive view of the company and feel like their time, energy, and effort was valued. It’s also important to think of the long-term implications of a bad experience, as studies show that companies lose a significant portion of customers and revenue over negative candidate experiences.
So what steps should you take to ensure your candidate experience is a positive one? We’ve rounded up 15 companies to learn from that are standout examples of organizations putting in the extra effort to make their candidate experience efficient, enjoyable, and effective.
Candidates applying for positions at 3M know what to expect from the start. Instead of stressing over how many interviews they’ll have or who they’ll be interviewing with, candidates can focus on putting their best selves forward for the interview, because 3M lays out their entire process on their careers website. Their user-friendly site outlines everything candidates need to know about their hiring process, from pre-process, to top traits they’re looking for, to an HR timeline of what to expect once you’ve received your offer. 3M even shares interview tips straight from their hiring managers and a checklist for success, ensuring candidates can feel confident in their preparations. By taking the uncertainty out of the process, 3M makes sure that candidates can focus on getting the job—not on what they’ll have to do next.
Aramark has embraced the virtual landscape by engaging student candidates on social media and with new online events. The team recently began hosting Virtual Open Houses for the first time, reaching about 200 students with their first event. They also completely revamped their Aramark Early Career Instagram page to help students navigate the hiring process. Their page includes helpful information on virtual events, employee highlights, and great tips for students to guide them through applying and interviewing. Aramark has taken their social media efforts to the next level by utilizing additional sites, like LinkedIn and Snapchat, to showcase their roles and culture to students who are active on those platforms. By expanding their digital presence and increasing virtual events, Aramark is able to reach more students and ensure all candidates have a positive experience.
At Avis Budget Group, the performance of the recruitment team has a direct and immediate impact on customer experience. Recruiters at the company realised that they needed to meet candidates on social media platforms to provide a quick and easy candidate experience. Although they focus job feed efforts on Facebook, Avis publishes and updates positions, manages events, and advertises career fairs all from their Careers page. To compliment this user-friendly strategy, Avis Budget Group has started to use chatbots on their website to improve candidate engagement. A customized FAQ experience allows candidates to select questions that are most relevant to them, with the system narrowing down responses until the candidate finds the answer they need. Updated information pages, live chatbots, and personalized updates guarantee Avis candidates are informed every step of the way.
A few years ago Children’s Mercy Hospital found that they had a high, 40% drop off rate on their online application. Upon analyzing their application process, they realized the job descriptions were not clear enough and used too much specific jargon. They also realized their application was taking candidates too long to fill out and asking for too much personal information upfront. In 2015, they decided to take action and created a way for candidates to apply for a job without the online application or medical jargon getting in the way. Their solution was a video submission process where candidates record themselves answering two questions: “What is your background? What would you like to do for Children’s Mercy?” Within two days, candidates hear back from a recruiter if they’re going to proceed in the process, and learn what job fits them best. This has proven to be very successful for them, with 10-15 of their hires a month now coming from the “Introduce Yourself” program.
Cigna is committed to supporting candidates through the hiring process. Their careers site includes important information for every stage of the process, from submitting an application, through receiving an offer. It also includes helpful interview tips and FAQs to answer any question candidates may have. Cigna also makes good use of their Life at Cigna Instagram account, offering helpful tips straight from recruiters on the page. During COVID-19, Cigna has gone the extra mile to support candidates, placing an emphasis on candidate communications. During a time of crisis, the Cigna recruiting team knew that transparency was more important than ever. They partnered with their PR and marketing teams to ensure they were conveying COVID-related information consistently across different channels. In addition, Cigna focused on communicating changes, specifically as they related to making sure candidates were set up for success in an unfamiliar virtual environment. The team tied this together with a landing page on the career site that provided up-to-date information for candidates to put them at ease in regards to the status of their application.
In an interview with LinkedIn, Delta’s vice president of talent acquisition Jennifer Carpenter shares that the secret to Delta’s great candidate experience is simple: showing candidates that they care. Receiving over a million applicants yearly, having a negative candidate experience would not only affect Delta’s brand as an employer, but also as an airline. That’s why the talent team at Delta “designs for the disappointed” and ensures that candidates – whether they’re hired or not – have a seamless experience at every point in the hiring process.
Among their strategies is the use of video interviewing technology, specifically HireVue, which allows applicants to share their story beyond a resume. Delta also provides prospective candidates with a holistic and realistic picture of the job they’re applying for, ensuring a candidate knows what they’re signing up for when they apply. Transparency is an important part of the candidate experience as well – Delta doesn’t believe in leaving candidates hanging if they aren’t selected for the job, and their IT recruiting team walks technical candidates through their offer options to ensure Delta is the absolute right fit for their career goals. With these strategies, it’s not surprising Delta has won awards for their great candidate experience in the past, and continues to be recognized for the efforts they make to create a better process for everyone involved.
Management at DocuSign decided to invest in the candidate experience by ensuring their recruiters were equipped with the knowledge and incentive to do their jobs to the best of their ability. They created an entirely new scoring system that would help better acknowledge and value recruiters’ success. The system called “DocuLove” provides a score for each recruiter based off of complex analysis of their performance and candidate feedback via surveys. They don’t base the system purely off the number of hires, but they measure each position’s level of difficulty to fill. With intricacies like this, the score most accurately reflects which recruiters are top performers, and they can reward them accordingly. Recruiters at DocuSign were asking for more feedback and positive reinforcement, so this system allowed management to execute that. The detailed feedback and incentives recruiters receive from the scoring system show them where they can improve and push to do better. Since the system was put in place, recruiters’ scores on employee engagement reviews have improved, and they’ve seen candidate experience reviews improve as well.
In the midst of all the uncertainty of 2020, Echo Global Logistics prioritized providing a strong remote candidate experience. To do so, they trained staff specifically on how to deliver a positive experience during the virtual interview process. They also knew that while students may have understood how to interview in-person, they likely hadn’t received much training or advice on interviewing in a remote world. In order to help students feel prepared, the university team compiled and distributed one pagers on “How to Interview Virtually” to every single candidate. The team also put together events and content for students to help them learn more about the company. This included panels, webinars, videos of employees, and one-on-one meetings to help them get to know the Echo Global Logistics team. They even created a video to showcase their office, which helped give candidates a real feel for their company culture!
It can often feel like a chore when candidates have to travel for an onsite interview, so Kimberly-Clark makes sure their accommodations feel closer to a mini vacation. Visiting candidates receive a car service with a driver knowledgeable about the area, so they can get a real sense of what it would be like to live there. Then once they arrive in their hotel room, they find a welcome basket with some free products and materials to get to know the area. The compnay also created a more interesting candidate experience by adding a personality quiz on their job site. To attract younger candidates, they crafted the quiz in a Buzzfeed-style with pictures in every question. They use this career-personality quiz to highlight the different types of personalities that make up their team, and what projects they worked on.
National Grid doesn’t leave candidates in the dark about their hiring process. Whether you’re applying for their unique summer internship program, an entry level role, or their Leadership Development Program for MBA grads, the entire process is outlined in detail on their careers page. The application timeline, frequently asked questions, and testimonials are all prominently displayed so candidates can get a clear picture of what to expect. Over the last year, the company has fully embraced virtual recruitment and hiring to find fresh and innovative talent. Their four-step application process includes a video interview, as well as game-based assessments to test candidates’ cognitive, emotional and social traits. Knowing that virtual interviewing presents a whole new list of challenges for students, National Grid has partnered with City Year to ensure young people feel prepared to succeed in the virtual recruiting environment. The two organizations aim to ensure young people feel supported by providing tools to help build their confidence.
NerdWallet found that a successful candidate experience comes from a personalized, thoughtful approach. In an interview with First Round Interview, their VP of People Operations, Flo Thinh, explained that they look into a candidate’s social media profiles to get a glimpse at their interests, like a favorite food or sports team, to weave into conversations. She feels that this acknowledges candidates as real people, not just a name on a resume and creates a personal connection that people will remember. The rest of their hiring process is just as candidate-friendly, including sharing an interview day outline that provides candidates with the names of the employees they’ll be meeting with, as well as the exact timing they can expect that day. They also send candidates transportation tips to ease travel stress and a detailed benefits summary booklet that they can read over at home.
As such a large company, P&G keeps things simple with an easy-to-follow process and attention to accessibility. Their main hiring page lays out the process in four easy steps: Application, Assessment, Interviews, and Offer. Each step has a “learn more” option that leads to a separate page detailing what a candidate can expect and what is required of them, or they can choose to submit a Disability Accommodation Request. The company revamped their careers site in 2018 to create a mobile-friendly, straightforward design that streamlines the application process, resulting in a better candidate experience. And, their online chat service provides 24/7 assistance for any questions a browsing candidate may have. With all of the information easy to access, it leaves little room for confusion or frustration, and candidates can better prepare for their assessment and interviews.
Spotify delivers on an internship candidate experience that is clear, informative, and as seamless as it gets. Their internship page clearly lists the different programs and opportunities that are available, along with deadlines for applications, program lengths, and FAQs. There’s also plenty of advice shared on the page, including experiences from current and past interns. They even have a spotify culture podcast, the Greenroom, where previous interns talk about their time in the Global Summer Internship Program. If you’re just curious about getting started, they offer a ‘Connect With Talent Community’ page that allows prospective candidates to get connected with the talent community by submitting their resume and LinkedIn profile. From start to finish, candidates know exactly what to expect with Spotify.
Many times, the worst part of a candidate’s experience is waiting around. Sutherland’s solution to this problem was an omni-channel bot, Tasha. In an interview with LinkedIn, Sutherland’s former VP of Global Talent Acquisition, Kelly Culler, explained they found there was a certain point during the interviewing time period where 80% of candidates abandon the process. To combat this, the bot keeps up with candidates, helps them schedule interviews, and prompts them to continue the process if they seem inactive. She can also answer early questions the candidates have from her knowledge base that’s constantly being updated with new information. After the first two months, Sutherland saw that 80% drop off decrease to 62%, and expects it to continue to improve. While this may sound like a bot taking over the job of a human recruiter, it actually just helps the recruiter save time and focus on the most important parts of the process, like the actual interviews.
When the coronavirus pandemic forced a switch to remote work in 2020, Twilio had to quickly adapt their interviews to match. The first step was training their managers on how to conduct virtual interviews, ensuring a positive experience for candidates. Although the interview process has essentially stayed the same, candidates are now able to meet with multiple employees at once, eliminating the need for numerous stressful back-to-back interviews. Twilio also realized that it’s more difficult for candidates to understand their company culture without getting to visit the office in person, so they’ve made it a point to talk about culture and share videos about the company throughout the hiring process.
Twilio has done their best to help candidates navigate the video interview process, even launching Unplugged, a video series to help candidates prepare for interviews. Their “How to Ace Virtual Interviews’‘ blog post also includes helpful tips on how to best present yourself during a virtual interview, with many of the tips applicable for success during in-person interviews, as well. Importantly, the company has recognized that the video interview process can be uncomfortable for candidates, and has stressed the importance of giving candidates time to acclimate to the new experience. By being patient and educating candidates on virtual interviews, they can ensure that the candidate experience is just as positive in a remote environment as it is in-person.
These companies all put extra effort into creating a great experience for every candidate that goes through their interviewing process. In return, they get excited new hires, attract a better pool of applicants, and even leave rejected candidates with a positive view of the company. By word of mouth or through online reviews, a bad candidate experience can spread and reflect poorly on your company, even potentially affecting future revenue. Use these examples of different tools and processes and think about what could work well at your company to create a better candidate experience.
