Your candidate experience has a huge impact on your employer brand. It affects how candidates feel about you and the types of reviews they leave online after going through the vetting process.
Negative reviews impact who’s likely to apply for future roles, so finding ways to mitigate them is important.
Here are five ways to improve your employer brand with a better candidate experience:
Use a clear job title
Job titles like “ninja” or “rockstar” sound great, but part of being accessible means using clear language.
Sometimes, if the job title is for a ninja or a rockstar, it’s not clear what the role entails.
Saying that someone is an HR manager is a lot clearer than saying they’re a people guru, for example.
Being clear also helps with your visibility on job search sites and LinkedIn. Candidates search for keywords. This means if you’re not using those keywords, or they don’t see them in the job description or title, a great fit could end up not applying.
Don’t sugarcoat expectations
Sometimes, businesses can sugarcoat what’s expected of employees. Or, they might not go into detail about how stressful a role can be.
While you don’t want to tell them the role will be stressful (if it is, you’ve got bigger problems that need fixing), you do want to be upfront if it’s a fast-paced environment. Roles where things move quickly attract different types of people than those that move at a more leisurely pace.
For someone to be successful in a role, you need to clearly explain what success in the role looks like. Surprisingly few businesses do this, which means doing so is another great way to boost your employer brand.
Be honest about salary
Ever seen a job posting that just states “competitive salary” instead of what the actual budget for the role is?
Don’t do that.
From a business point of view, I get it.
From a moral point of view, it’s frustrating for candidates to get to the end of a process and discover that you don’t have the budget to pay what they’re looking for.
Or to learn later that you had a higher budget but chose not to pay them that because their imposter syndrome or lack of confidence prevented them from asking for a higher salary.
Calling your pay “competitive” makes your business look opaque and old-fashioned.
It subconsciously suggests that you’ll pay candidates what they think they’re worth, not what you think they’re worth. You have a budget for the role, so why not just say that from the start?
Most of the time, I’ve found that when a business says the pay is competitive, what they actually mean is that they’re paying pittance.
I work as a freelance writer, and when I first started out and applied for roles where agencies or businesses said their pay was competitive, they usually charged a cent per word while expecting writers to churn out tens of thousands of words per month. That’s a whole lot of writer’s cramp for not a lot of pay.
Their focus was on volume over content quality. But as the industry changes, quality content will become increasingly more important than quantity.
To get the best hires and elevate your employer brand, you need to be upfront about your expectations and salary. It’s as simple as that.
Give feedback
If someone’s unsuccessful in applying, they’re 4 times more likely to try again for a future role if you offer feedback.
The best way for us to grow is through feedback. We can only get better when we know what to work on.
Despite how many candidates want feedback after an unsuccessful job application, 30% of candidates have been through at least one interview where they never heard back.
This leaves them with a more negative view of the company they wanted to work for. In other words, it can seriously damage your employer brand. It also means they’ll repeat the same mistakes whether they reapply to your business later or they apply elsewhere.
Be clear and helpful in your feedback, and don’t worry about adhering to certain sandwich-style comment structures.
You don’t have to go really in-depth, just provide a few bullet points explaining the strengths and weaknesses.
If it really did come down to someone else having more experience, candidates will still appreciate your honesty and transparency. Being communicative is a simple, but extremely significant thing you can do to bolster your employer brand.
Ask for feedback from candidates
As mentioned above, feedback is one of the best ways for us to learn and grow.
You don’t know what’s broken in your hiring process until you get feedback from people experiencing it. This is especially true from the folks who are unsuccessful.
There may be other ways of doing something that you hadn’t considered in the past. Or, your inclusivity could do with some extra work.
Likewise, if something is working really well, you want to make sure that you’re aware of it. That way, you don’t try to fix what isn’t broken.
This can sometimes happen when attempting to improve things whether it’s a hiring process, a marketing plan, or a novel.
We need to know what’s good and bad about something so that we focus on growing our strengths and enhancing our weaknesses. This is certainly true when it comes to both your candidate experience and your employer brand.
Conclusion
The experience you provide candidates has a huge impact on your employer brand. It affects how the outside world feels about your business, and this can have a ripple effect. Especially if anyone who did experience your hiring process is particularly vocal.
We’re more likely to share negative experiences over positive ones. If you want to avoid negative publicity that can harm who you attract to future roles, you want to make the process as positive as possible.
The more positive it is, the more positively candidates will feel about you, even if their application is unsuccessful. They may then come back in the future to work with you and be the perfect fit.
If you’re ready to take your employer brand to the next level, it’s important to make sure your employee experience is something to be proud of. Making the most of your employee programs, groups, and events ensures candidates can easily see you have a great company culture.
With an all-in-one employee experience hub like Workrowd, you can connect all your tools to streamline processes and get more bang for your employer brand buck. Visit us online, or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to learn more.
