Candidate experience is the name of the game this week. Take a look at these two posts to get caught up:

How to create and define your candidate experience

The good, the bad, the ugly – Interviews can make or break your candidate experience

We’ve thrown a lot of do’s and don’ts at you with these posts. Hopefully, we’ve inspired and affected some of you to make some changes for the better, but we also want you to know that making changes doesn’t mean spending money. There is plenty of low-cost ways to ameliorate applicants’ experiences with your company. We’ve collected some of the best. Voila!

Keep Job Postings Fresh – We don’t often like to give our competitors in the screening industry an edge, but HireRight has a really cool infographic about the road to talent acquisition. We especially like the point they make about job postings. Refresh them every 15 weeks or else candidates may start to wonder if it’s a crappy job or a crappy company.

Limit Lengthy ApplicationsApplications bordering on novel-length scope are frustrating for candidates and a hassle for HR departments. Things get worse if these suckers turn out to be timed AFTER a candidate has logged on. Why waste your HR department’s time with humongous applications from the get-go? You know there is basic information you need to weed out candidates. Simply focus on that and once you have your preliminary list of applicants, ask for more information. One hiring blog says online apps should take no less than 5 minutes. Yeah, you read that right.

Make ‘em Feel Welcome – This is not hard to do at all. Be courteous. Communicate quickly and efficiently. NorthCoast99 conducted a survey of applicants and found these qualities to be most important in first impressions: professional, personable, helpful, friendly, attentive. If any of your current company hiring representatives struggle with any of these, consider getting them some coaching or realigning their duties. You never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Be Timely and Give Updates – Respondents to NorthCoast99’s survey also stated they were most satisfied when they were sufficiently informed, timely in responses, willing to be flexible when it mattered, their questions were answered quickly and fully.

Outsource Checks – We love this one. As a high-quality background screening company with an impeccable record and affordable, automated platforms, we know the freedom we can bring to stressed out and overworked HR departments and recruiters. We’d love for you to discover that for yourself. And, before you think this option is too spendy, we urge to take a look at this case example from Reebok International: “In an effort to increase recruiter productivity, Reebok moved to an automated reference check process in 2007, called Skillsurvey (www.skillsurvey.com). We found that recruiters were spending 10% of their time verifying references and we wanted the focus to shift towards negotiating, building relationships with line leaders and cultivating relationships with candidates. Confidential 360 surveys go out to the selected candidate and the information is aggregated into one final report. The surveys are highly customizable to ensure we are hiring the right candidates into the right roles that align with our core competencies. From a legal compliance standpoint, each recruiter is following a consistent measurable approach for each hire. By adopting automated reference checking into your process, it will increase recruiter productivity, build your passive candidate pool, increase efficiencies and assist in hiring the right talent into your organization.”

Improve the Let-Down – This isn’t the sexiest of our options, but it is important. Your reputation depends on it. Remember that old adage that one person will tell 10 people and those 10 people will tell 10 people? That’s how quickly bad news about your organization can travel. So, when you are no longer interested in a client, tell them. Direct communication like a phone call is best or have your recruiter do it. Letters and/or emails are the next best options. In our industry, background screening, this is extremely important to keep you in compliance with federal employment law (Fair Credit Reporting Act). If you decide not to hire an applicant based on something that appears in their background check, you need to inform them immediately. It’s called Adverse Action. If you don’t do this, you could get sued big time.

What did you like about your hiring process? Anything you wish you’d done differently? Shoot us an email or a comment and we’ll try to use it.

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