What Candidates Want: Key Research Findings [Infographic]

At PeopleScout, we hear a lot of talk about the candidate experience. Most organizations understand the importance of improving how they engage with job seekers. Yet, our latest research shows that less than two in 10 candidates would rate their recent recruitment experience as excellent.

We audited the candidate journeys of over 215 organizations around the world, assigning each a Candidate Experience Quotient (CandidateXQ) score based on 40 key experience indicators, 15 of which are critical to the candidate experience. Then, we analyzed these scores alongside data gathered from surveying over 2,400 job seekers globally. The results revealed a clear disparity between candidate expectations and their reality.

Check out this infographic to explore the key findings from the Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report.

For more global candidate experience insights, download the full Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report.

Inside the Candidate Experience: 3 Revelations from Our 2023 Report

By Simon Wright, Global Head of Talent Advisory

When it comes to applying for and accepting new jobs, candidates have more options than ever before. Companies with poor candidate experiences will lose out on the top talent as employers battle for the best prospects.

So, how does the average candidate experience stack up against candidate expectations?

According to PeopleScout’s most recent research, less than two in 10 candidates rate their experience as excellent.

For the Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report, we used our proprietary Candidate Experience Diagnostic to audit the candidate journeys of over 215 organizations worldwide. Then we compared this to data gathered via a global survey of over 2,400 job seekers.

Research report

Inside the candidate experience 2023 report

The findings reveal a significant gap between candidate expectations and the reality they face while looking for jobs, gathering information to support their decision, and applying.

Here are three surprises from our research:

1. Less than half of employers show information about the organization’s mission, purpose or values on the career site

Yet, they’re in the top considerations for applicants when deciding to apply.

Your takeaway:

Candidates want fulfilling employment and a company that upholds their values—especially Gen Z and Millennial workers. In fact, one in five Millennials state that an organization’s goals and mission are their top priority when considering a job. By not featuring this information on your career site, you’re passing up an opportunity to create an emotional connection with your candidates.

2. Just half (53%) of organizations provide an opportunity for candidates to register their interest or to sign up for job alerts

Even fewer (39%) prompted candidates to join a talent community.

Your takeaway:

Modern job seekers are more sophisticated than ever and are looking to grow a career, not just apply for jobs transactionally. In fact, on average nine months goes by between a candidate engaging with an employer and applying for a job. Maintaining a talent pipeline lets you build a relationship with your talent audience and ensures you get the best talent, not just those who are looking at the time a vacancy arises.

3. 44% of organizations did not provide an opportunity for candidates to give feedback on their experience

Plus, men are more likely than women to be aware of opportunities to provide and receive feedback during the recruitment process.

Your takeaway:

This is a major oversight for many organizations. If you’re not leveraging surveys to gather feedback from all of your candidates, you are passing up valuable insights that might help you enhance your employer brand, lower attrition and shorten your hiring cycle.

The candidate experience is a hot topic, and most talent leaders I speak with appear to recognize the value of improving the candidate journey. However, this research demonstrates that organizations still have work to do to live up to the standards of today’s job seekers. My hope is that our recent findings will mobilize talent acquisition teams to put real action behind their words and make bold moves to improve their candidate experience and speed up the pace of progress.

To get the full research and more actionable insights, download the Inside the Candidate Experience 2023 Report.

Inside the Candidate Experience

Inside the Candidate Experience

The Hard Truth About Candidate Expectations vs Candidate Experience Realities

The candidate experience has never been more important. Yet, the latest research from PeopleScout shows that less than two in 10 candidates would rate their recent recruitment experience as excellent.

We audited the candidate journey of over 215 organizations around the world, giving each a Candidate Experience Quotient (CandidateXQ) score—a calculation based on 40 key experience indicators, including 15 critical factors that make or break the candidate experience.

By analyzing these CandidateXQ scores alongside data gathered from surveying over 2,400 job seekers globally, we uncovered a clear disparity between candidate expectation and reality.

Download our free Inside the Candidate Experience report for the latest research exploring:

  • What candidates expect at each stage of the journey and how employers stack up
  • Where each industry is succeeding or struggling with candidate experience
  • Actionable steps you can take to improve your CandidateXQ

[On-Demand] The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part Two

[On-Demand] The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part Two

Candidate experience has never been more important. Yet, fewer than two in ten candidates rate their experience as excellent.

So, what can you do about it?

To find the answer, PeopleScout audited the candidate journey of more than 215 organizations around the world, giving each a Candidate Experience Quotient, CandidateXQ, score.

By analyzing these CandidateXQ scores alongside data gathered via a survey of over 2,400 job seekers globally, we uncovered a clear disparity between candidate expectations and the reality they encounter while searching for jobs, gathering information to support their decision, and applying. These findings are detailed in our new research report, Inside the Candidate Experience.

For deeper insights into our research as well as actionable ways you can improve your own candidate journey, join PeopleScout Global Head of Talent Consulting Simon Wright for the companion Talking Talent webinar, The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part Two, available now, on-demand.

In the webinar, Simon covers:

  • Our most significant research findings

  • How candidate expectations line up with reality and how you can close the gap

  • How generational differences influence what candidates consider before taking a role

  • An action plan to start improving your candidate experience

  • And more!

If you missed The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part One, watch the half-hour webinar on-demand now!

Creating an Effective Employer Brand for Volume Hiring 

It’s no secret that job vacancies continue to outnumber job seekers.  But what many employers focused on volume hiring don’t realize is that they already have one of the most effective tools for out-recruiting their competition at their disposal: their employer brand.

Investing in your employer value proposition (EVP) and employer brand is one of the best ways an organization can differentiate and attract the volumes of candidates it needs without compromising on quality-of-hire. In this article, we share ways to make your employer brand work harder for your volume hiring needs.

Ebook

Learn 9 Strategies for Improving Volume Hiring

Employer Brand vs Consumer Brand        

At PeopleScout, we define employer brand and EVP as follows:

  • Employer brand: Your employer brand is the perception and lived experiences of what it’s like to work for your organization.
  • Employer value proposition: Your employer value proposition, or EVP, captures the essence of your uniqueness as an employer and the “give and get” between you and your employees.

When an organization’s brand is well-known, there is frequently an overlap in sentiment between the consumer and employer brands in the minds of the general public. What candidates expect from you as consumers will be very different from what they’re looking for as potential employees.

Your employer brand should showcase the characteristics that make a company a great place to work, as well as the benefits, career growth opportunities, work-life balance and company culture that help you attract and retain talent.

Understand Your Audience & Tailor Your Content

The key to an effective employer brand is to know your audience. Zero in on who your ideal candidates are by looking at the most successful employees in each role. Are there similarities in their work experience, motivators or personalities? For example, we helped a telecoms client create candidate persona profiles for their contact center and found that many of their longest tenured employees were previously employed in beauty salons. These employees were applying their previous customer service experience to their phone and online customer interactions.

By shifting the mindset from getting candidates with previous call center experience to getting applications from candidates with past customer service experience in salons, restaurants and hotels, we were able to help the client increase offer acceptance and reduce attrition.

Similarly broadening your target audience will help you hire at scale in today’s tight market, and understanding who is most successful in a role—what makes them tick, what motivates them—will help you lean into the aspects of your employer brand that will be most meaningful to them. That could mean playing up your flexible work shifts, growth opportunities or your organizational values.

Create a Positive Candidate Experience

Even if you receive an influx of applicants for a role, don’t sacrifice the candidate experience. Word of mouth is still alive and well, and candidates have no problem sharing their experiences (especially negative ones) on social media.

Investing in CRM tools to introduce more personalization into your candidate communications can boost your candidate experience. Look for tools with texting and SMS capabilities to reach candidates where they already are. Texting is often more accessible for many hourly job seekers who are more likely to rely on their mobile devices for job searches and internet access.

Automating your screening and interview scheduling processes via text helps free up time for your recruiters and hiring managers to connect one-on-one with candidates and hold meaningful conversations that improve the candidate experience.

Your recruitment process should leave every applicant, regardless of whether they get a job with you, with a positive impression of your organization. Candidates are often your customers, and the last thing you want is for your candidate experience to negatively impact your consumer brand reputation. An exceptional candidate experience is essential not only in engaging the talent you need today, but in establishing a strong employer brand that will serve you well into the future.

Get Tips to Optimize High-Volume Recruitment

Want more tactics for high-volume recruitment? Check out our ebook, 9 Strategies for Solving High-Volume Hiring Challenges.

Talking Talent: Vanity Metrics vs. Sanity Metrics in RPO

In this episode we’re talking about how to determine which metrics you should use to drive and define success in your RPO program.

At PeopleScout, we like to say there are two kinds of metrics—vanity metrics and sanity metrics. Vanity metrics are the numbers that may look great on paper, but fail to tell the full story of what is happening in your talent program. Vanity metrics may make you feel successful. Sanity metrics actually make you successful. So, how do you tell the difference?

Joining us to discuss is Stephen Carlson, vice president of client delivery at PeopleScout. In this conversation, Stephen shares why some the typical metrics that you’re tracking are actually vanity metrics. He outlines how you can dig deeper to find the right metrics within your program to identify opportunities for improvement and take action.

Stephen shares real-world examples from PeopleScout clients who were hitting their talent goals but knew they could be doing more. By taking a deeper look at the numbers, they were able to elevate their programs to the next level. Stephen gives tips to help you start the conversation and work with your RPO provider to better understand your program data.

Heading into 2023 with uncertain market conditions and the potential for fluctuating hiring volumes, defining and tracking your sanity metrics can help you better respond to and weather changes in the market. For example, if you anticipate having fewer job postings but more applicants in 2023, you likely need to adjust how you move candidates through the process. Stephen explains how to look at the right data to enable quick and effective changes while maintaining an efficient process and engaging candidate experience.

[On-Demand] The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part One

[On-Demand] The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience: Part One

Heading into 2023, employers continue to face a challenging talent market. Beyond a shortage of qualified applicants, candidate expectations for the recruitment process have never been higher. Our latest research shows that fewer than two in ten candidates rate their experience as excellent, which means engaging top talent in the new year will require a new approach.

Make 2023 the year you focus on how you interact with job seekers. Join PeopleScout Global Head of Talent Consulting Simon Wright for the newest Talking Talent webinar, The Hard Truth About Candidate Experience available on-demand.

This bite-sized 30-minute webinar is part one of a two-part series that makes a case for the importance of a stellar candidate experience and provides the data to back up our recommendations for creating one.

In this first webinar, Simon will cover:

  • The state of the global jobs market
  • Current trends in job seeker behavior
  • The impact of changing consumer expectations
  • The cost of a poor candidate experience
  • And our forthcoming research!

[On-Demand] How to Build an Agile Workforce for Scale and Demand

[On-Demand] How to Build an Agile Workforce for Scale and Demand

Employers today are dealing with more than just a tight talent market, increased turnover and rising wages; the world of work has permanently changed —and so have candidate expectations. The demand for total talent has become more dynamic, and employers are leveraging seasonal and project-based hiring to reduce the time to mobilise internal and external workforces.

Watch this on-demand webinar in partnership with HR Exchange Network to get a real-life case study on agile hiring solutions that combine candidate experience, talent acquisition technology and dynamic insights-led sourcing, which are aligned to future workforce plans.

Talking Talent: RPO in a Shifting Economy

It has been more than two years since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in that time, we’ve seen an economy and a job market that have changed in unprecedented ways. Talent leaders have dealt with lean teams, developed new, virtual processes for interviewing candidates and worked through the challenges of hiring through the Great Rehire and Great Resignation. Now, they’re staring down an entirely new economic reality.

In this episode of Talking Talent, Rick Betori shares his insights on the current economic landscape and how talent leaders can stay ahead. Rick also shares how RPO, recruitment process outsourcing, can create the biggest opportunities for talent leaders as they prepare for 2023.

The U.S. economy has officially regained all of the jobs lost at the start of the pandemic, putting an end to the Great Rehire. The pace of hiring has started to slow; however, current monthly job gains remain at historically high levels. The labor force participation rate has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, and there are currently 4.8 million more open jobs than there are unemployed Americans. On top of that, inflation remains high, and the Federal Reserve continues to raise rates to keep the economy healthy.

It’s a complicated landscape. How should talent leaders respond? Many have leaned on RPO recruitment companies to get through hiring spikes and implement new technology. But what is the value of an RPO partnership during more steady state hiring? How can talent leaders pull in more workers who have yet to return to the job market? What is the role of talent technology in today’s market, and how can you ensure a strong employer brand?

Joining this episode to discuss these issues is Rick Betori, PeopleScout’s President.* Rick has been with TrueBlue since 2011 and has more than 25 years of proven experience driving organizational change and growth.

*At the time of this recording, Rick’s title was PeopleScout Managing Director, the Americas.

Candidate Experience Pitfalls That Impact Diversity Recruitment [Infographic]

Diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) is a top priority for global organizations, but only 5% say they’re succeeding with their DE&I initiatives. We decided to look into where talent acquisition programs fit in and how the recruitment process may be contributing to this disparity for companies.

In looking at the research, we uncovered some common pitfalls within the candidate experience in which organizations unintentionally sabotage their DE&I efforts.

CHECK OUT OUR INFOGRAPHIC TO EXPLORE SOME OF THE DATA WE UNCOVERED IN OUR DIVERSITY & THE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE REPORT.

Diversity and candidate experience infographic

To learn even more about diversity recruitment, download, Diversity & the Candidate Experience: Identifying Recruitment Pitfalls to Improve DE&I Outcomes.