Employee Experience Starts with Candidate Experience
Workforce planning is critical to creating a great candidate experience
The Employee Experience Lifecycle is both the employee journey and the HR processes that define every interaction with employees – from the initial job posting all the way through the exit interview. The goal is for employees to start, and end, their employee experience with nothing but good feelings about you and your company.
In today’s hiring market, fast-moving conversations on social media can help or hurt the reputation of your company very quickly. That means every candidate’s experience and every employee’s experience with your company can potentially influence the quality of your future hires. If you don’t provide a great candidate experience, your best potential hires will look elsewhere. And if you don’t treat your employees well, they’ll find another company that will (and tell their friends and followers about it!)
In our last blog we discussed the Employee Experience Lifecycle model and how it guides HR operations and employee experience through three major phases: ATTRACTION, ENGAGEMENT and RETENTION. Now we’ll take a closer look at the first phase…
It all starts with ATTRACTION: how to create a positive candidate experience
The Employee Experience Lifecycle begins with the three elements of ATTRACTION:
Workforce Planning: focusing on identifying talent needs
Sourcing and Recruiting: building a plan to attract qualified candidates, and then
Interviewing and Selection: selecting the ideal hire for the role
We often think of the employee experience beginning during the onboarding process, but the reality is that potential hires start evaluating your company the minute they read the job posting. Even before, if they are familiar with your brand.
The old adage “you only get one chance to make a first impression” absolutely holds true when it comes to recruiting top tier talent for your business. And while we always want to put our best foot forward in any situation, it’s especially critical when recruiting in a job climate that favors the candidate over the employer.
That’s why the ATTRACTION elements of the lifecycle are vital. Research shows a direct correlation between a company’s employment brand reputation and its ability to attract the best talent.
When you’re getting ready to fill an open position, you need to get all three of these elements right to ensure the candidate experience is positive and engaging. All three must work harmoniously to create a favorable first impression of your employment brand and value proposition.
Workforce Planning:
Think of this as the combustion that starts the employee experience lifecycle. For example, you may begin by identifying critical skill gaps for your company. From there, you will decide if you’re able to fill those gaps by developing existing employees or if you’ll need to hire external talent. While this all happens internally, it is absolutely essential because it sets the tone for your sourcing/recruiting and interviewing/selection processes.
You’ll want to make sure your whole team is on board with the hiring plan so when you get to the next step, you’re all on the same page and ready to find the best person for the job. Business leaders tend to understand sales and marketing plans better than recruiting plans. This can be a huge disconnect. If we believe our people are truly vital to the success of the business, then we need to invest the same time and effort into creating a plan that enables us to recruiting our next great hire.
Sourcing and Recruiting:
This is how you find and attract the right talent. Similar to channel marketing, you need to have a strategy and plan in place to cast the widest net to find talent. Then invite them to explore more about the role and your company’s brand and values.
HR and business leaders must work as partners to recruit and qualify talent in much the same way sales and marketing support one another. Managers and HR are both responsible for the candidate and employee experience and must work collaboratively to make strong first impressions and create an emotional connection to your brand.
Interviewing and Selection:
At its core, this element focuses on the ability to qualify and hire the right talent. It centers on a clearly defined interviewing methodology that enables you to assess the competency level of external talent and the compensation (or total rewards) package needed to hire the right talent.
As Brenan German talked about in the HR.com article Are Candidates Ghosting You? the world of recruiting has a lot in common with dating. And in the current job market, candidates have the luxury of playing the field a bit. So it’s up to you to convince them that a long-term relationship with your company is the right fit.
Think of your candidate experience as a customer experience
The way you engage with potential candidates makes all the difference! Here are a few key tips for wooing and engaging potential new hires:
1) Treat everyone with a personal touch as you look for potential.
And by everyone, we mean everyone. Even candidates that are definitely not qualified for the position. This doesn’t mean a personal phone call to each to tell them they aren’t being considered for the job. But creating a thoughtful, encouraging, and positive automated response doesn’t take much time and can make a meaningful difference in how folks perceive you.
2) Model – and communicate – the behavior you want from candidates.
Every company and hiring process is different, so don’t leave potential hires guessing at what you need and want from them during the interview process. Make your hiring process and timeline clear from the outset. Let applicants know what you expect from them, what they should expect from you, and the steps in the hiring process (and stick to it).
3) Go old school with your best candidates – talk.
Inevitably, you will have to turn down a qualified candidate, as you can’t hire everyone. But there’s a difference between outright dismissal and keeping the door open. You never know what might come open down the line, so keeping potential hires hooked in is critical to building your brand reputation.
When telling a qualified candidate “no,” be sure to call them and explain why the job didn’t work out. Be encouraging and let them know you’ll keep them in mind for other positions that become available. And if you aren’t quite sure how to do this, there is training available to learn how to say “no” with dignity.
The difference between recruiting wins and recruiting fails…
When the ATTRACTION elements are done well, you create a better starting experience for your employees. This will, quite possibly, make your recruiting job easier in the long run. Because when you retain engaged employees, you will always beat the competition who struggles to keep employees.
The long and short of it is: when workforce planning, recruitment, and selection are done well, you’ll notice strong pipelines of talent and referrals. And when they are done poorly, you’ll experience a shortage of available talent both externally and internally to fill your openings.
Which would you rather have?
If you’d like to learn more about how we use this model as a foundation for how we help our clients, please give us a call or shoot over an email. We can help you align and nurture your practices to bring your ecosystem into balance, realize your vision and create the employee experience that’s right for your company.
We look forward to hearing from you!