Why is Candidate Experience Important? 

Your candidate experience impacts your ability to hire high-quality talent—for better or for worse. 

Candidates can easily share their experiences within their network, via social media, and on employer review sites—and your candidates can easily find them. Nearly half of candidates (54%) say they research every company before applying.

A positive experience can enhance your employer brand and help you attract more high-quality candidates. On the other hand, a negative candidate experience can damage your company’s reputation, making it more challenging to attract top talent.

The impact the candidate experience can have on your talent pool doesn’t end with employer branding. Based on a recent candidate experience, 26% of North American candidates say they will definitely increase their relationship with the company through referrals and future job applications—as well as product purchases and brand alliance. Happy candidates can become brand ambassadors that help your business succeed, even when they’re not hired.

Three-fourths of organizations have had difficulty recruiting for full-time regular positions, noting that a low number of applicants is their top challenge. A poor candidate experience during the pre-application phase could be to blame.

Candidates said they would stop applying or abandon a job application if:

• The salary range wasn’t disclosed in the job posting (38%)
• The application functionality is clumsy, repetitive, or not easy to fill out (33%)
• There were spelling and grammatical errors in the job description (30%)

Candidates have many choices about where to apply and won’t waste their time with a bad application process.

Provide job seekers with a positive candidate experience from the very beginning of their journey so you can convert more of them into applicants.

Candidates are evaluating your team and organization as much as you’re evaluating them.

A thoughtful candidate experience helps job seekers feel valued and respected, enabling you to build positive relationships with them. This makes candidates more likely to stay engaged in your recruitment process and excited about the opportunity to join your team.

A poor candidate experience may lead your candidates to withdraw from your recruitment process. For example, 47% of job seekers said poor communication would cause them to voluntarily pull out of the recruitment process.

An exceptional candidate experience doesn’t just help you attract and engage candidates—it helps you close the deal when it’s time to make a job offer.

A positive candidate journey can position your company as an employer of choice and reinforce a job seeker’s desire to join your team. This translates to a higher job offer acceptance rate so you can hire more of your top-choice candidates.

Conversely, a poor candidate experience can lead job seekers to view your company in a negative light and question how they might be treated as employees. Candidates who aren’t excited about joining your team are more likely to stay in their current role or keep looking for opportunities elsewhere, leading to declined job offers.

Sourcing and interviewing candidates requires a lot of time and effort. The last thing you want is for your most qualified candidates to withdraw from your interview process or reject your job offers. This can extend your hiring process, as you move on to your next best candidate—or re-start your search.

A well-crafted candidate experience can help you build a more efficient recruitment process that reduces your time to hire. Attracting skilled talent, keeping candidates engaged in your interview process, and increasing your offer acceptance rate enables you to hire qualified talent faster.

Investing in candidate experience can also reduce recruiting costs in the long run by making your hiring process more efficient. 

Quicker hires and fewer withdrawals mean fewer instances where you need to re-advertise roles, interview additional candidates, or extend the hiring timeline. Each of these repetitive efforts can add significant costs to your recruiting budget.

Additionally, reducing the time a position remains unfilled directly impacts your cost of vacancy, the hidden costs incurred when a role is empty. When positions remain open, productivity dips, workloads increase for existing employees, and potential revenue opportunities may be missed. By enhancing the candidate experience and minimizing unnecessary delays, you shorten the hiring timeline, enabling you to fill roles faster and mitigate the costs associated with extended vacancies.

A positive candidate experience is crucial for securing top talent, especially when the most qualified candidates often have other job opportunities to choose from. These skilled professionals aren’t just evaluating your role, but also your company and your culture. The way you treat them can make a significant impact on their decision to join your company.

A thoughtful candidate experience gives job seekers a positive impression of your company. This not only makes a job offer more attractive to your top-choice candidates, it fosters a sense of loyalty and enthusiasm from the start. This leads to high-quality hires who are eager to contribute and excel in their new roles, driving your organization’s long-term success.

The positive impact of a strong candidate experience doesn’t end with the offer stage.

A great candidate experience sets the stage for early employee engagement. New hires who have a positive recruitment experience develop a sense of connection with your company and feel valued from the outset. This translates to a happier, more loyal workforce with lower turnover rates. In fact, Aptitude Research found that companies with positive candidate experiences were 3x more likely to improve employee retention.

A positive candidate experience helps you attract, engage, and close skilled talent so you can build a high-quality team. It also helps you build early employee engagement and increase retention so you have loyal, committed, and motivated team members who stay with your organization long-term. It’s no surprise that companies with positive candidate experiences are 2x more likely to improve employee performance.

A stand-out candidate experience requires forethought, effort, and iteration to get it right—but it’s well worth the investment. Treating candidates well can help you attract, engage, and retain the skilled talent your team needs to reach your organizational goals.

Conduct a candidate survey to learn how you can improve your recruitment practices—then take steps to improve your candidate experience. A continuous feedback loop will help you refine your candidate experience over time so you can achieve better hiring outcomes.