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Skilled talent will always be in demand and the best candidates often have more than one opportunity available to them. A poor candidate experience can dissuade these in-demand candidates from joining your team and lead to a negative employer review that dissuades future candidates from applying.
A positive candidate experience, on the other hand, can help you attract, engage, and hire top-tier talent while also contributing to better employee retention and performance.
The problem is, you can’t ensure a standout candidate experience on your own. No matter how skilled you are at finding qualified candidates and selling the job, recruitment is a team sport. You need support from other departments and buy-in from the top down to get the candidate experience right.
Let’s explore how to demonstrate the value of a great candidate experience, get buy-in, and secure the budget you need to bring positive change.
1
Identify your allies
A poor candidate experience affects people across your team. New hires may begin their employee journey with low engagement and morale. Managers may lose their top-choice candidates and experience long time-to-fill. Company leaders may experience the cost-of-vacancy as missed organizational goals and revenue loss.
Take the time to understand everyone’s pain points around your company’s candidate experience and identify key stakeholders who also want to see organizational change in this area. Engaging company leaders can be especially helpful for gauging if and when you should advocate for new resources. At the end of the day, you’re not just asking for more money. You’re trying to change how your company views recruitment and you need support for that.
Why timing matters
Timing is an important element of getting buy-in and budget. You can have a real business need for candidate experience resources, but it won’t matter if your company is going through tough times or your executives are busy putting out other fires.
It’s probably not the best time to ask your executives for money if they’re in the process of furloughs or layoffs. Schedule your pitch for a time when they’re most receptive, such as when you’re expecting significant headcount growth or when leaders are preparing budgets.
2
Build a compelling business case
Once you feel company leaders are open to your input, prepare your pitch so you can confidently present your request. You need to illustrate the negative consequences of having a bad candidate experience and reinforce the importance of hiring the right people.
Gather information from various sources to build your case:
Use these inputs to craft a pitch that shares challenges and opportunities in your recruitment process, the solutions you need to overcome them, and the expected return on investment.
3
Start the conversation
Now that you have an outline for how to present your case, you need to start the conversation.
Here are a couple of email templates you can use to set a meeting with company leaders.
Hi [Person’s name],
I hope you’re doing well. I’d like to schedule a meeting with you next week to discuss the current state of our hiring process and share some solutions that can make significant improvements.
Do you have time for a quick briefing this week on Wednesday or Thursday?
Thank you,
[Your name]
Alternatively, you can use a message like this if your company has a set budgeting period and time to review proposals.
Hi [Person’s name],
As the annual budget review is coming up, I’d like to share some opportunities to improve our hiring process and fill open positions faster.
Do you have 30 minutes to go over a proposal this week?
Thank you,
[Your name]
4
Pitch company leaders
To secure budget, you’ll need to demonstrate why the employee experience matters and how an investment could benefit your organization.
Share your most compelling findings from the data and stories you compiled to build your business case, especially as they relate to organizational goals and priorities. For example, if your company is focused on growth, share how your candidate experience is slowing you down. If you’re focused on innovation, share how challenging it is to achieve an acceptable quality of hire due to candidate withdrawals and offer rejections.
Share specific examples of your recruiting challenges and offer a solution. For instance, you can say:
We’ve lost three candidates for the project manager position because they accepted other offers before we could schedule a final interview. This has happened with several other roles, and we suspect our hiring process is too long and prevents us from closing the deal with high-quality candidates. We’d like to invest in an ATS that can help us review candidates faster, enable interview self-scheduling, and automate candidate communications.
Finally, follow up with clear next steps and remove as much friction as possible. For instance:
If you’re interested in proceeding. I’ve spoken with a representative from [Company] and she has time this week to present their solution to you.
5
Share your candidate experience wins
A positive candidate experience is a journey that will require continued investment. Measure your progress and share wins with company leaders to maintain their support and buy-in over time.
For example, share how interview self-scheduling has increased recruiter efficiency and improved your time-to-fill. Or relay how candidate satisfaction scores and offer acceptance rates have increased since you implemented an interviewer training program. Tie these back to revenue to quantify how a better candidate experience is helping your company reduce cost of vacancy and improve performance.
Even small wins can make a big impact on your candidate experience and help build momentum for future initiatives.
Final thoughts on getting the budget to improve your candidate experience
A positive candidate experience is crucial for recruitment success—but you can’t achieve it on your own. You’ll need support if you want to create a recruitment process that gets skilled talent excited about joining your company. This includes an appropriate budget to implement necessary changes. With leadership buy-in, you can design a seamless and engaging candidate journey that makes your company an employer of choice.
Want to learn how JobScore can help you elevate your candidate experience?
