You know your candidate experience needs improving. But you can’t simply walk into a budget meeting with hands out and ask for the financing and resources to make all the improvements you want.
Dealing with executives and CFOs is tough. Preparation takes time and you need to walk into your meeting with confidence so you can convince decision makers that they should give you the budget allocation to make the improvements your company needs.
In this post, we will prep you with all the key information you need to convince your decision makers that they need to prioritise improving the candidate experience in your company.
Candidate Experience: By The Numbers
How can you convince the decision-makers in your company that candidate experience is important? You have to be tactical about your approach. You can’t simply go into a meeting and tell your execs you need to improve your employer brand and that it will bring you better candidates – you need to show them the numbers…
Increasing Your Offer Conversion Rate
Are your candidates taking a long time to mull over offers, or rejecting them all together?
According to IBM, a positive candidate experience makes a candidate 38% more likely to accept a job offer.
By focusing on your candidate experience strategy you can ensure that when top talent applies for your roles, you will be the one to entice them into your position and that they don’t end up taking a similar vacant role with a competitor.
Don’t Tarnish your Brand…
A poor candidate experience ruins your reputation with your candidates – and then with the people they know.
According to Shortlister.com, 80% of candidates who have a poor experience will openly or actively tell their network about that experience.
When word of your poor candidate experience spreads, talented applicants stop applying for your roles. They don’t want to go through that negative experience and will look elsewhere for vacancies.
Your company then has to work harder in other areas to compensate for a poor experience. This can be by paying higher salaries, offering more benefits etc.
Get A Higher Number of Applicants For Your Roles…
Are you struggling to attract talented applicants? It is probably because of a poor candidate experience.
According to Recruiting Brief, 60% of job seekers report they have quit an application due to its length or complexity.
By focusing your candidate experience on creating a seamless and simple application process you can stop frustrated candidates from dropping off. A higher volume of candidates gives you a wider pool to pick from and can stop top talent from falling through your net.
Give Feedback To All Your Candidates
Giving feedback takes time. For small HR teams, it can often seem like a waste of resources. If you don’t interact with that candidate again why would you waste time giving them feedback?
Well, constructive feedback is a key part of an exceptional candidate experience.
According to TalentBoard, over 50% of candidates report that employers never keep them informed about their application status. This gives candidates a negative view of your company and means they are less likely to apply for roles in future or will share their poor experience with friends and colleagues.
According to Lever, talent is four times more likely to consider your company in the future if you offer constructive feedback. It is worth taking the time to add candidate feedback into your HR process.
To Sum Up
Candidate experience is one of the most important HR strategies you can focus on in 2021. It affects so many areas of your business from brand reputation to talent acquisition but convincing decision-makers in your company that it is worth the investment can be difficult. The best way to get them to allocate you the budget you need is by showing them the numbers. Keen to learn more about how to create a great candidate experience? Download our E-Book: How to improve your Candidate Experience: A Step-By-Step Guide.