Technology is great, it facilitates several everyday tasks and speeds up uncoutable processes – it starts with your laundry and continues with your applicant tracking system. We at softgarden love the technological advance so much that we completely dedicated ourselves to it. Our passion is a recruiting software which solves recruiters’ problems they haven’t been aware of yet. But even we tech-freaks need to pause from time to time and shout: “Stop, don’t forget the human beings!” – especially when it comes to the candidate experience. Thanks to the technical advance the recruiting process became faster and cheaper – but only if you also pay attention to the candidate experience it also becomes better. Despite machines, humans remain humans. And humans especially like one thing: human contact. Here a quick explenation of what candidate experience actually means and what you should consider regarding the usage of technology:

What is candidate experience?

To explain it briefly, candidate experience means the whole experience a potential candidate makes with your company, which should be manly positive. Every perception of your company, your brand, your products and services, your employees as well as online and offline presences define the candidate experience. This especially counts for your communication processes und interactions with your potential candidates. Here you can read more about the candidate experience.

Technology & candidate cxperience: Do’s

As a recruiter you should always use recruiting technology in a way that improves the candidate experience. For expampe by:

gaining more information about your candidates’ needs regarding the recruiting process and implementing them in your recruiting process (for example a one-click application, a CV import from social plattforms into your applicant tracking system)
addapting your recruiting channels to the needs of your potential candidates (for example socal media recruiting, mobile version, responsive web design, etc. …)
getting in contact with your potential candidates much faster (for example by automating all of your administrative tasks to have more time for your candidates)
strengthening your employer brand with different media such as videos, pictures or podcasts
regularly sending status updates regarding the recruiting process after having received an application. This especially counts for rejections.
setting up a talent pool to stay in contact with your potential talents

Important: Evaluate your recruiting process with regard to the candidate experience regularly. Here you find a little guide.

Technology & candidate experience: Don’ts

Don’t send standardised rejections to candidates you already had a long interview with. Instead send a personal mail and tell them the main reasons for the rejection. Nobody wants to be fobbed off with an impersonal standardised message after getting to know each other, also the candidate invested time and effort in the interview, so don’t let the machine do your work here.

Don’t fully rely on the candidates screening of an applicant tracking system. A preselection based on certain criteria is good but try to look for high potentials yourself. As the name itself already implies: potential you most often find apart from normative criteria such as school grades, certificates or working experience.

Social networks like LinkedIn or Xing make it easier for recruiters to look for candidates but please don’t exaggerate it. Getting countless not suitable and impersonal job offers which obviously show that a recruiter did not screen the profile before is annoyin,g especially because their profiles contain all the information a recruiter needs – nicely structured. So please make use of all technical options social media has to offer but in a professional way!

Bildquelle: flickr/brad montgomery