digital candidate journey

Everything you need to know about the Digital Candidate Journey

Let’s think back to the last time you booked an uber. First things first, it’s an uber intuitive user-interface (see what I did there). You’re immediately shown drivers around you in real-time, simple form request – key in your current location and destination. Wait for about a minute; then you’re instantly connected with your ride.

At this point, you’re able to communicate with the driver, track his location in real-time, see your journey estimate etc. 

This consumer journey isn’t just limited to booking rides, think about any positive digital experience you’ve had online, and the correlations boil down to three fundamental principles: transparency, accessibility and on-demand.

• Transparency: Real-time visibility as to where you stand in a process now
• Accessibility: Usability on any device, any location – catering to as many people as possible 
• On-demand: Ability for users to request information or interact with a service when they want to. 

When you put all these concepts into perspective, it leads to a straightforward question, why isn’t this the case in HR? specifically the candidate application process. 

What is the candidate journey? 

The candidate journey considers the path candidates take as they apply for a job with a company. 

Traditionally HR teams model their candidate journey on the marketing principle  AIDA . Utilising this principle HR teams can break down the candidate journey into – awareness, consideration, interest, application, selection and hiring+onboarding. 

The candidate journey considers that individual candidates experience several points of contact as they funnel across the hiring process, and thus forms a unique perception of their experience. 

Why does this matter? On average, a vacancy attracts more than 250 applicants (in the current climate this could be more), the reality is  around five  will make it to the ‘selection’ or interview stage, and more often than not, only one person gets a job. 

So then what? What happens to the candidates that have seen or applied to the postings? How do they feel about their candidate journey?

What is the Digital Candidate Journey?  

The  Digital Candidate Journey  considers all the variables within the traditional candidate journey but delivers solutions based around the digital consumer’s expectations and focuses on impactful experiences.

The Digital candidate journey solution is built around transparency, accessibility and on-demand principles and finally ensures the ‘Uber’ or ‘Amazon’ experience applies to individual experiences within the hiring funnel. 

Within the Digital Candidate Journey, candidates build relationships with employers because:  

• Each candidate builds impactful relationships with an organisation, via experience personalisation.
• There’s an always-on HR system that always notifies candidates of status changes as they occur. 
• Candidates can engage with HR teams in real-time and get answers to questions they may have 24/7, anywhere and on any device. 

How EVA powers the Digital Candidate Journey

EVA, our award-winning Human Resource Management System (HRMS) delivers custom automation-first solutions across the HCM lifecycle by converging Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Chatbots, Machine Learning and Analytics.

EVA’s thoughtful, and well designed conversational interface engages candidates in real-time, initiating the screening process, testing eligibility and fit-to-roles while delivering on-demand job updates. EVA then sends scored directly to your hiring team’s workbench in real-time. 

Each candidate has access to the Talent portal; where candidates can upload their CV, update their availability, clarify their career goals, and apply to relevant jobs – all by having a quick conversation with EVABot.

The connected value chain

The value created when hiring operations and HR technology drive board/executive strategy via automation holds massive potential. As a function, in-house HR leaders rarely take the time to analyse their hiring process; the effects the current candidate journey has in the broader team and how this translates to the digital candidate journey. 

Thus, the ability to visualise the gaps, review the duplication of effort and assess the connected value chain of activity, process, and systems to align with the corporate goal is often overlooked.

How to transform your Candidate Journey to a Digital Candidate Journey

EVA.ai has developed a simple, free and easy to use tool that helps leaders capture how they acquire, nurture, process and retain talent. The Candidate Acquisition and Retention (CAR) worksheet helps teams identify insights around your hiring process, and understand how to build an ‘automation-first’ use-case for their organisation, Today. 

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What are the candidate journey touchpoints and how to map it

Before consumers decide to buy, they go through a lengthy thought process. It takes time for them to learn about a company and the product or service it offers before they eventually decide whether they want to make a purchase. This customer journey does not differ too much from the candidate journey, showing that recruitment and sales are very much alike.

Candidates go through multiple steps in the candidate journey before they decide to apply to your company. As a matter of fact, when they make their final decision to apply, the second phase of their journey begins.

Understanding the candidate journey is crucial to improving the overall candidate experience and acquiring the best talent. As the market has become very candidate-centric, it is becoming increasingly harder to get candidates further down your application funnel. Understanding what candidates go through can improve your entire hiring process to ensure that candidates don’t churn or drop out in the process.

What is the candidate journey?

The candidate journey can be defined as the experiences that job seekers go through during the job-hunting process. It starts before candidates apply for a job, and it continues even after you have hired the candidate.

Understanding the candidate journey can improve the candidate experience, lower the cost and time to hire , and build a stronger employer brand .

The candidate journey definition shouldn't vary too much from company to company, though the candidate journey touchpoints may, depending on their unique hiring process.

What are the candidate journey touchpoints?

The candidate journey is a multi-step process that candidates go through in their job hunt. Generally, there are seven candidate journey touchpoints:

• Consideration
• Application

The first three touchpoints can be described as the pre-application phase. In this phase, your job as a recruiter is mainly to engage in recruitment marketing to reach passive job seekers . This means grabbing the attention of your potential candidates, getting them excited to work for your company, and eventually get them to apply.

The pre-application phase of the candidate journey involves all the touchpoints candidates have with your company before applying. These can be both online and offline.

Examples include:

• Viewing your job ads
• Talk to a company representative at a career fair
• Visit your career site
• Visit your company social media pages
• Talk to someone they know at the company
• Any interaction they might have had as a customer

Every touchpoint with your company plays a role in whether potential candidates will turn (or “convert”, as you might say in sales terminology) into actual candidates. That’s why it is crucial to make sure that each touchpoint gives the potential candidates a positive experience.

The pre-application phase consists of three steps:

1. Awareness

These are the first of the candidate journey touchpoints with your company. They make potential candidates aware of who you are, what your organization does and what it’s like to work there. In this stage, candidates are just getting to know you. This could be through jobs or speaking to a current employee.

2. Consideration

When candidates have experienced a few of your touchpoints, they enter the consideration phase, where they determine if they’re interested in working for your company.

During this stage, they may have additional points of contact with your company (like meeting representatives at job fairs or visiting your careers page) that will lead them to the next stage or filter them out of the candidate journey.

It’s essential to keep in mind that potential candidates can move back to the awareness phase from the consideration phase. The candidate journey is not a linear process for everyone, especially in the pre-application stage.

3. Interest

In this step, potential candidates are genuinely interested in working for your company. This is the final step in the thought process before applying.

When potential candidates have reached this step, they are likely to apply unless something happens (like getting a job offer from another company they applied to). There are still several touchpoints at this stage. Common examples include retargeted job ads or candidates emailing to ask questions about the job.

The application phase: application, selection, and hiring

As soon as a candidate starts filling in the application form on your website, they enter the application candidate journey touchpoint. From this moment, you have much more control over how they perceive you and their experiences with you. The application phase involves everything that happens from the moment that candidates fill out the application form to the moment that you hire or reject them.

This phase of the candidate journey has three main steps:

4. Application

The application step naturally starts when the applicants fill out the application form and end when they are rejected or after the job interview(s).

‍ The way you communicate with your candidates during this step is a crucial factor in determining their perception of your company. Also, the way you reject candidates is important to think about. It involves face-to-face communication as its main touchpoint.

At this point, you have an excellent opportunity to show your candidates what your company is all about and why they should work there.

5. Selection

The selection step starts immediately after the interview(s).

During this step, you evaluate your candidates based on their interviews. For the candidate, it means a lot of waiting. While most companies don’t communicate too much with candidates during this stage, you can still generate touchpoints to improve the candidate experience.

For example, you could send an email to thank the candidates for their time and let them know how long it will take before making your decision. You could also send them study materials if they would like to know more about your company. Remember, though, it’s poor practice to fail to supply candidates with updates if this step is taking some time.

The last step in the application phase is when candidates get either hired or rejected after interviews conclude. Many recruiters consider this step to be the final step of the candidate journey.

Nothing could be further from the truth for those seeking to create a great candidate experience. The touchpoint for this stage is the call or email that informs the candidate of the decision. If you reject a candidate, make sure that you let them know why they didn’t make it . Transparency in your recruitment processes significantly improves the candidate experience.

The post-application phase: onboarding

Recruiters often forget the onboarding process. They get so caught up in the hiring process that they often have little time to think about the successful hires they have made. This practice, however, can be damaging to the company.

7. Onboarding

Onboarding your candidates is an essential part of the candidate journey. It has a significant impact on whether your candidate stays at your company after the probation period. This directly correlates with your new starter retention rates.

As a recruiter, you should already be thinking about onboarding before you hire. After all, you don’t want to lose an employee just a month after spending so much time, effort, and resources on the recruitment process.

Onboarding involves different people from different departments. The best practice involves at least one person from the new hire's team and one from HR or hiring. The HR member can take care of company onboarding while the team member carries out the team onboarding.

Mapping out your candidate journey touchpoints

Mapping out the candidate journey is crucial to understanding what your candidates go through and what you can do to improve candidate experience. It can help you improve the journey to ensure that you attract the best candidates, shorten the time to hire and decrease your hiring costs.

Mapping out your candidate journey can be done in three steps:

Step 1: Define your candidate persona

Understanding your ideal candidates is the first step in mapping out your candidate journey. You need to understand whose journey it is that you are mapping, after all. Creating a candidate persona is one way to do this.

Creating candidate personas is similar to creating customer personas . It’s consideration into what your ideal candidate would be and describing them. It’s absolutely fine to have multiple personas for each job.

Candidate personas help you to clarify whose journey you are mapping for what job. This is important because different candidates can have very different journeys. A senior developer, for example, will not have the same journey as a junior legal counsel.

Step 2: Set up the candidate journey framework and identify the needs of the candidate

The different phases and seven steps described above should form the basis of your candidate journey map. This framework is universally applicable as all candidates go through every step of the process, regardless of where they apply.

The basis of every step in the candidate journey is made up of the candidates’ needs. To map out the journey properly, you will need to think about what those needs are and what thoughts and feelings drive the candidates' behavior.

These thoughts might be:

• Awareness: What does this company do? Who are they?
• Consideration: What can this company offer me?
• Interest: What makes this company different from others? Could I see myself working here?
• Application: Has my application been received? Will I get invited for an interview?
• Selection: Do they like me? Did I get a good impression of the company?
• Hire: I got the job!
• Onboarding: What should I be doing? What are my tasks? How do I do this and that?

Contemplating your (potential) candidates' thoughts helps you understand the candidate journey a lot better. Having a hard time knowing what it is that your candidates are thinking during their journey? Try sending out questionnaires after each step in the application phase (application, selection, and hire).

Step 3: Map out candidate journey touchpoints

To map out the journey, you need to know what the touchpoints are between your company and the (potential) candidates.

Touchpoints refer to all the interactions candidates have with your company. Your task is to discover all possible touchpoints that a specific persona can have in every part of the candidate journey.

The number of possible touchpoints that candidates could have is endless, especially in the pre-application phase. This can make it hard to map out every single touchpoint and where your candidate persona will be most beneficial. Think about their behaviors: how do they spend their time? What websites do they often visit? What social media channels are they active on? Try to identify between three and five touchpoints for every step of the journey.

When mapping out the touchpoints, don’t forget to create a list of channels where these interactions take place. Having an overview of the channels makes it easier for you to know where you can reach each persona, at what stage of the journey and for what job.

Using the candidate journey map

You’ve mapped out your candidate journey; now what?

Your map can help you with many things. First of all, you can use it to improve the candidate experience. Candidate experience has become one of the most critical factors in acquiring the best talent. A poor candidate experience can do a lot of damage to both your business and employer brand. The journey map shows you every touchpoint and stage that candidates go through. This helps you get a good overview of what your recruitment process looks like and where you can improve on the candidate experience.

The candidate journey map is also a great tool to help make your recruitment processes more efficient and effective. It allows you to identify bottlenecks within the process and get a good idea of which parts of the process aren’t going well. This way, you can improve both your hiring decisions and shorten your time to hire.

In conclusion: your new talent are people, not products

Candidate journeys and candidate experience are about people and relationships. Heading right back to the beginning of this piece, we talked about how similar the customer journey was to acquiring new talent and the candidate journey.

The crucial difference between products and people is people are living, breathing entities with feelings and emotions. We act on how we feel, so we must consider every interaction we make with those around us.

When it comes to candidate journeys, it’s more crucial than ever. Not only do you want to impress, you need your candidates to feel safe, valued, and informed at every step—even if you decide you don’t have a place for them at the time.

Use the journey and candidate map to look after your people, and you won’t go too far wrong. Use them to make your possible hires feel truly important and cared for, and you’ll succeed in boosting a far more substantial range of candidates through your acquisition funnel.

Adrie is a content strategist at Foleon, and the former Head of Content & Branding at Recruitee!

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Candidate Journey: How to Create, Map, and Measure Candidate Touchpoints

Job seekers interact with companies across multiple touchpoints — both in-person and virtually. How to better map out and understand the candidate journey.

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You are how you treat people. For companies, that includes rejected job applicants. 

Sometimes, employers forget how large their hiring pool actually is. This makes them overlook the countless opportunities candidates have to interact with their company. To ensure a positive experience for all, you need to understand where all these job seekers are coming from. 

So let's talk about the candidate journey: what it is, how you can map it, and tips for how to improve the candidate experience so that all applicants feel seen and heard.

What is the candidate journey?

A candidate journey is the path a prospective employee takes toward finding and getting a job. 

It's often compared to the customer journey toward purchasing a good or service. If you need a new pair of pants, you may think about whether they should be jeans, slacks, joggers, etc…, then learn about all the different brands, then read product reviews, then ask friends for advice, and finally decide if (and where) you want to buy them.

Job seekers have a similar journey. Take Zoe, our hypothetical candidate who's spent two years at her current role and is considering a change. She'll mention to friends that she's on the job hunt, consult LinkedIn and other social media feeds, research roles on message boards and company websites, interview for different jobs, and ultimately decide on one of them based on her candidate experience . 

The journey starts before the candidate applies to any jobs. Then it doesn't end until after they've accepted a role and finished onboarding.

This path is often depicted as a funnel (similar to the sales funnel ) because the hiring pool dwindles as people advance through stages of the journey — going from leads to candidates to hires. 

The 6 Stages of the candidate journey

Below is each stage, along with a glimpse into our candidate Zoe's thought process. 

Awareness. What jobs are out there? What is this company? What do they do?

Consideration . What makes me a good fit here? What value can I bring to the company?

Interest . What makes this company stand out? Is this somewhere I can see myself growing?

Application . Has anyone looked at my online job application? Did I get an interview? How can I nail it?

Selection . Are they interested in hiring me? Does it still seem like a place I'd want to work?

Hire . Thanks for the offer — I'll take it!

Why does the candidate journey matter?

Hiring is a two-way street. Your best candidates are likely weighing a slew of other job openings, and they're judging whether they fit within your company with the same rigor your company uses to judge their candidacy. 

That's why their hiring experience is so important. In fact, 67% of job seekers reported a negative candidate experience in the last year, and 58% declined a job offer because of it . 

And a lousy candidate experience is almost always due to a long, tricky, and inconvenient journey. Anytime a prospective employee wades through a disorganized interview process, discovers the role's real responsibilities don't match the job description, or feels iffy about company culture — it likely means their journey wasn't planned out properly. 

This spells dangerous consequences for your company's brand. In one study, 37% of candidates said they've left a negative review about an employer after having a bad hiring experience. But on the flip side, 61% of candidates said they left a positive review if the experience was smooth . 

Be it online or offline, you have to game out every opportunity candidates have to connect with your company. See next:

What you need to know about touchpoints

The funnel-like shape of the candidate journey is a helpful visualization. But in reality, the actual path is nonlinear. Job seekers pave their own ways toward offers, at their own speed. And they probably have multiple in-person and virtual interactions with your company — whether it's your employer brand or the people who work there — before completing the journey. 

These interactions are called touchpoints.

For instance, our candidate, Zoe, may: 

See a friend advertising your job on social media.

Visit your website and consult your careers page.

Check how employees review your company on job boards.

Grab coffee with a friend, who's a recruiter, to discuss the role.

Browse her college's alumni talent network.

Talk to a hiring manager at a job fair.

Fill out an application on your online job portal.

Interview over Zoom.

Knowing these touchpoints lets you track how candidates are interacting with your company at different stages of their journey. 

If you represent this visually, you have your map! 

Why is it important to map the candidate journey?

Mapping lets you envision the journey from the candidate's perspective. This way, you can anticipate what the candidate wants at every stage and deliver a more targeted experience, all while improving your recruitment marketing strategy.

For instance, if you find candidates get a lot of mileage out of social media during the "awareness" phase, but find in-person interactions are more fruitful when they're strongly considering the role, then you can allocate resources accordingly by only involving recruiters after a candidate shows strong interest. 

According to 80% of job seekers , this kind of breezy experience makes candidates likelier to accept a job offer, which, in turn makes it easier to hire top talent — all while lowering costs and reducing time to hire .

The 4 steps to mapping out your candidate journey

Seeing as how 91% of the workforce looks for new job prospects every year , your hiring pool is bigger than you realize. Here's how to map out the candidate journey so that you can access as many of those recruits as possible:

1. Sketch your candidate persona

When you think of your ideal candidate, what comes to mind? 

Think of the skills you'd like that person to have. What kind of work environment do they prefer? What are their career goals? 

These traits will help you dream up your candidate persona. It's rooted in real-people qualities, but it doesn't have to be a real person. 

What matters is that you're getting specific about skills and behavioral traits. Because those people will have a certain kind of candidate journey, different from other candidate personas. 

For example, if you're looking for entry-level sales representatives, you may want to focus on getting the word out in early career job fairs. If you want a more seasoned sales team lead, you probably want to take advantage of different touchpoints, like getting a senior executive to send a personal email. 

2. Identify candidate journey touchpoints

Think about what your candidate persona wants. Is it more money? Less oversight? A flexible schedule? 

What about their needs — more psychological safety? A greater sense of career purpose?

Answers to these questions help you predict a job seeker's behavior when interacting with different companies. And, as we discussed, those interactions make up the touchpoints. List all of them, trying to identify which touchpoints your candidate persona interacts with at each stage of the journey.  

Keep in mind that you're likely to have both passive candidates, who may be happily employed but occasionally browse their prospects, and more active job seekers, who want that next job ASAP. Passive candidates may employ different touchpoints than active ones. 

3. Put together a list of channels

Touchpoints are how a candidate interacts with your company (e.g., a career site). Channels are the specific tools that candidates use to make those interactions happen (e.g. Indeed or ZipRecruiter).

This to say the same touchpoint can have multiple channels — either online or offline — within it. For instance, maybe our hypothetical candidate Zoe uses Ivan, her old college friend who's a recruiter, as a touchpoint to learn more about the company. 

She could scroll through Ivan's LinkedIn profile, chat with him about the available role over coffee, look at his bio on the company website, E-mail him questions, and have Ivan put in a word-of-mouth referral to a supervisor. These are five different channels for the same touchpoint. 

It's worth noting that candidates can use tons of different channels to complain about a lackluster candidate experience. For instance, if you never updated someone about their application status, they could leave a bad Glassdoor review, fire off a frustrated Tweet, complain to their friends about it in person at brunch, etc… 

4. Draw your candidate journey map

Here's the fun part. 

With all the information you've accumulated in the previous three steps, you can make a visual representation of one job seeker's candidate journey. 

There's no prescriptive template for this. But the more candidate data you have, the merrier. This should include demographic information, along with the touchpoints and channels the candidate used at each of the six stages of the journey. 

Here's an example of a candidate journey map for Zoe:

Tips to ensure a smooth candidate journey:

Now that you know how to map the candidate journey, here are some tips on how to make it more efficient, all while maximizing the candidate experience. 

Place candidates front and center

If the hiring process is the solar system, your candidate is the sun. Companies need to focus on candidates at every stage of the journey — paying proper attention to any wants, needs, and pain points. 

This means being both communicative and transparent at every phase of the application process.

You may think this is wasted time, seeing as how you're picking one candidate out of a bountiful hiring pool. But candidates you turn down may be a great fit for the role a couple years down the line. They may also have friends or colleagues who'd be great hires in other departments. 

By keeping your journey centered around the candidate, you're bolstering your company brand while ensuring no one leaves the experience with a sour taste in their mouth. 

Think about employer branding

Your company's reputation matters. Three quarters of candidates think about it before applying for a job . And according to one study, almost 70% of all job seekers refuse to work anywhere with a bad rap . 

This is something worth considering across every touchpoint, throughout every stage of the journey. Whether you're sending emails, posting to job boards, sending recruiters to expos, or writing blog posts on your website, every interaction with a candidate has the potential to either boost or harm your reputation .  

Put yourself in the candidate's shoes

Earlier, we talked about how sketching your candidate persona makes for a breezier hiring experience. But it also helps for anyone involved in talent acquisition to swap perspectives. If you were a candidate, what does the ideal job look like? 

It's likely one where the candidate feels respected, understood, and fulfilled. Maybe it's one with a four-day workweek. Maybe it's one that encourages colleagues to spend time with each other outside of work settings. Regardless of what you come up with, thinking like the candidate helps you anticipate their needs and design your recruiting process around them. 

Show what it's like to work with you

The best candidates need an honest impression of what day-to-day work with your company actually looks like . Zoe may be excited about researching, applying, and interviewing for a role, but none of those steps speak to the job itself. You don't want a candidate to be unpleasantly surprised with the role after it's too late. 

This is where creative supplements to a job interview come into play. Think about giving finalist candidates a test assessment that mimics real work they'd be doing . You can also consider having them shadow an employee for a day, or getting them to interview with every colleague they'd be working with. This helps with retention — the more people new hires speak with before their start date, the likelier they are to stick around . 

Measuring your candidate experience

You've cobbled together your touchpoints. You've pinpointed which channels facilitate those touchpoints. You've even visualized it all onto a map for each individual candidate journey. But how exactly do you use this to evaluate candidate experience?

You need, in a word, data . For one, you can solicit feedback from candidates at each stage of the hiring process . Consider using hiring software to automatically send out surveys to accepted and rejected candidates. Asking short questions like, "how satisfied are you with your job seeking experience here?" 

If you score these responses with a rubric, you can measure them against one another and ensure they're improving over time. And if you're doing this across touchpoints, you can develop a sense of how different recruiting tactics work for different interactions. 

But the true goldmine for data lies in your interviews. You just need a way to harness it…

Unlocking your interview data with Hume

Hume is an AI-powered interview companion that records and transcribes conversations with candidates. Instead of scribbling pain staking notes, you can focus directly on the interviewee, ensuring a much more pleasurable candidate experience. 

But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Hume also lets you annotate interviews. You can tag sections of the transcript where candidates discuss the touchpoints they interacted with, and then use those tags to help map out their unique journey. This way, every job seeker leaves your hiring process feeling valued. Why? Because the platform keeps conversations fair, focused, and personalized. 

Hume takes all the guesswork out of hiring by placing your interviews into a searchable repository. This way, recruiters, hiring managers, and all other interviewers can easily prepare for their conversations and quickly discover which common traits your top talent shares.   

Hiring experiences can get torpedoed by slipshod, unstructured interviews — which are cesspools for dangerous types of bias . But with Hume, you can ensure every interview follows a consistent line of questioning and delivers the fairest possible experience. Seeing as how most interviewers lack formal training, you can even build a coaching library of best practices that all hirers can turn to for insight. 

A smooth candidate journey makes for a delightful candidate experience. This does wonders for your company's reputation and promises a worthy ROI. See how Hume can help you create, map, and measure a journey any candidate would love to travel by visiting our homepage to sign up for the waitlist or following us on LinkedIn . 

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Table of contents, what is the candidate journey here are its top 11 touchpoints and ways to map them.

From the moment a job seeker comes across a job post to the day of their successful placement, they go through a prolonged journey with recruiters. 

This ‘journey’ consists of a series of interactions that can make or break your recruitment process. 

In this article, we’re diving into its various touchpoints and top strategies to map them so you can create an experience for candidates to remember. Read on.

What is the candidate journey?

The candidate journey refers to the entire experience a job seeker goes through, from discovering a job opportunity to potentially accepting an offer in line with your hiring drive. 

It includes all the candidate-recruiter interactions, be it the application process, the interviews , the means of communication, or the onboarding procedure .

The importance of this journey lies in the impact on how a candidate perceives the recruitment process, the employer brand of the company, and the quality of candidates who are willing to sign up for the open position.

What are the touchpoints of the candidate journey?

The pre-application phase, stage 1: awareness.

In this stage, the candidate becomes aware of the job opportunity. This can occur through various channels, such as job boards, social media, referrals, or company websites. 

Remember, a company’s employer brand is critical in creating awareness and attracting potential candidates.

Stage 2: Interest

Now, the applicant tends to develop an interest in learning more about the position and the company. This also includes whether a job-seeker finds your job opening relevant to their work profile.

Further, they may dig into the business, study the respective job descriptions , and seek information about its culture, values, and benefits.

Stage 3: Consideration

At this stage, the candidate starts to weigh the pros and cons of applying for the position. 

They may compare the opportunity with other available positions, assess the alignment with their career goals, and evaluate the potential for growth within the company. 

Engaging content about the company’s culture, values, and employee testimonials can be influential at this stage.

Stage 4: Preparation

This is the final stage of the application process, where the candidate prepares their application materials. 

They may tailor their resume and cover letter to match the job description, gather the necessary documents, and seek advice or feedback from mentors or peers. 

Providing clear guidelines and tips on what the company looks for in an application can be helpful at this stage.

The application phase

Stage 5: application.

This part of the process is majorly about filling out application forms, submitting a resume and/or cover letter, and providing the required documentation. 

To ensure optimum convenience for candidates, you must adopt a user-friendly application process with clear instructions and minimal formalities to improve the candidate experience . 

Stage 6: Assessment

In this stage, recruiters make their grand entry into the candidate journey.  

This is an extensive step wherein you thoroughly review the application received and evaluate if the applicant’s profile aligns with the desired candidate persona. 

It involves multiple rounds of interviews , skills tests, and other assessments to hand-pick the most suitable candidate for the role. 

While assessing, recruiters are expected to communicate expectations head-on, followed up by a fair, transparent, and efficient screening process.

Stage 7: Selection

After a detailed examination has been conducted on all the candidates in the pipeline, the best one is picked for the role.

Recruiters finalize this decision based on factors like skills, experience, cultural fit, and potential for growth within the organization.

Stage 8: Offer

This is where the candidate journey finally comes to an end, now handing over the baton to the term “employee.”

This stage is marked with the extension of a job offer . 

It may also include a negotiation process where the candidate and company discuss salary, benefits, and other terms of employment.

The post-application phase

Stage 9: onboarding.

Onboarding belongs to the post-application phase of the recruitment process. 

Once the candidate accepts the offer, they transition into a new employee. This stage involves orientation, training , and integration into the company culture and team. 

A smooth and supportive onboarding process can help new employees feel welcomed and set them up for long-term organizational success.

Stage 10: Evaluation

After the onboarding process, there’s a period of evaluation where both the new employee and the company assess how well the integration is going. 

This includes regular check-ins, feedback sessions, and performance reviews. 

Open communication and clear expectations are key at this stage to ensure that the new employee is on the right track and feels supported.

Stage 11: Retention

The final stage is about retaining employees within the organization. 

This involves continuous engagement, professional development opportunities, recognition, and maintaining a positive work environment. 

The goal is to keep employees satisfied and motivated, contributing to their long-term success and growth within the company.

How to map the candidate journey? 4 quick steps for success

Step 1: Identify touchpoints and interactions

Touchpoints, the specific points of contact between a candidate and the company or recruiter, are integral to the recruitment process. 

In the pre-application phase, touchpoints range from initial interactions like job ads and social media posts to engaging content about the company’s culture and guidelines for application preparation. 

During the post-application phase, touchpoints extend to orientation materials, regular check-ins, and continuous engagement opportunities. 

Creating a comprehensive list of all potential candidate touchpoints and strategically aligning them with each stage helps in crafting a seamless experience, reflecting positively on the company’s employer brand.

Step 2: Gather data, identify areas for improvement

Collect data from candidate surveys , metrics, and feedback after interactions with candidates. 

Analyze this information to spot common problems and areas for immediate improvement. This isn’t just a one-time check; it’s an ongoing process that helps refine your recruitment strategy.

Find the gaps, address the issues, and continually evolve your approach. It’s about more than hiring; it’s about connecting with future employees and creating a streamlined, engaging experience that sets your organization apart. 

In a nutshell, the goal is to make the candidate’s journey as seamless as possible, building a positive connection that benefits everyone involved.

Step 3: Develop and make changes

Based on your analysis, develop a roadmap to address the identified areas for improvement. 

For example, this could involve updating your job descriptions , enhancing your career site, streamlining the application process, or improving communication with candidates. 

Implement the necessary changes and closely monitor their impact on the candidate experience.

Step 4: Continuously update and refine the candidate journey map

As your recruitment process evolves, stay on track with your candidate journey map and work on any deficiencies or outdated procedures that may need some tweaking.

Regularly review and refine the map to ensure it reflects the current scenario and the latest methods of your hiring cycle.

How to improve the candidate journey?

1. Invest in recruitment technology

Investing in recruitment technology like an applicant tracking system (ATS) can significantly improve the candidate journey in several ways, besides making it time and cost-efficient.

Automatic notifications, personalized emails, and consistent follow-ups help maintain engagement and ensure candidates are informed at each step.

A recruitment software also enables organizations to create user-friendly job portals and application forms, making it easier for candidates to apply for positions. 

2. Strengthen your employer brand

A strong employer brand helps attract and retain top talent, making it an essential consideration for long-term success. 

Build on your existing image by showcasing the company culture, values, and employee experiences on your website and social media, especially on professional platforms like LinkedIn. 

Use storytelling to highlight your mission, vision, and unique selling points as an employer of choice.

3. Optimize job postings

Ensure your job postings are clear, concise, engaging, and easy to understand. Highlight the key responsibilities, qualifications, and benefits of the position. 

Take note of inclusive language and avoid jargon or acronyms that may exclude candidates who belong to a certain community.

Use AI writing tools like ChatGPT to craft an attractive job post that caters to all the realms of your target audience.

4. Leverage social media and other channels

Expand your reach by promoting job opportunities and company culture through social media , job boards, and other relevant channels. 

Encourage employee advocacy by inviting your team to share job postings and company updates on their networks.

5. Train hiring managers and interviewers

Ensure that your hiring team understands the importance of candidate experience and how different gestures and initiatives can leave a lasting impact on a candidate’s mind.

Initiate mentorship programs and provide training on interviewing techniques, blind hiring, and effective communication to create a positive and consistent experience across all the steps of the recruitment drive.

Providing a positive experience to an applicant throughout their candidate journey is one of the major goals of every candidate-oriented recruiter. 

You can buy some handy tips from our mini-guide to enhance your candidate journey map and build a stellar employer brand for yourself (and definitely your clients as well!).

Happy recruiting! 

Frequently asked questions

1. what are the first and last stages of the candidate journey.

The first stage in a candidate’s journey is the awareness stage. It’s a crucial stage where candidates first become cognizant of a job opening or an organization that piques their interest. 

The last stage is onboarding. After the selection process, the candidate accepts the job offer and officially integrates into the organization, beginning their new role.

2. Why is the candidate journey important?

Emphasizing on candidate journey can have substantial benefits for a business. For one, a well-structured candidate journey can bolster an organization’s reputation and branding. This not only attracts potential employees but also paints a positive image of the company. 

Additionally, focusing on the candidate journey can enhance the quality of hires. It ensures the organization is engaging with the right talent, thus fostering a higher likelihood of success and meaningful contributions to the company’s objectives.

3. What role does #RecTech play in the candidate journey? 

Recruitment technology, or #RecTech, refines the candidate journey by automating routine tasks such as resume screening and interview scheduling. It uses tools like ATS for efficient candidate tracking and quick feedback. 

Automated email systems and chatbots enable real-time communication, enhancing candidate experience. Further, it offers personalization, providing tailored job recommendations and application updates.

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Designing Seamless Candidate Journeys: Optimizing Experience at Every Stage

The realm of talent acquisition and human resources is ever-evolving, especially with the surge of technological advancements. One of the most critical aspects that has seen significant growth is the focus on candidate experience. Just like customer experience in retail or user experience in software design, candidate experience is paramount in recruitment optimization.

In today’s competitive job market, designing a seamless candidate journey isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. But how can modern recruiters provide a frictionless experience from application to onboarding? The answer lies in leveraging digital recruitment and remote interview tools.

In this post, we’ll delve into strategies for enhancing each stage of the recruitment funnel, emphasizing the role of digital assessment and remote interview platforms. We’ll also discuss recruitment best practices that every organization should adopt.

Understanding the Importance of Candidate Experience

When we talk about candidate engagement, we mean the level of interest and enthusiasm shown by the candidate throughout the hiring process. A poor candidate experience can lead to losing top talent to competitors and may also harm your brand reputation. Thus, optimizing recruitment processes is not just a good-to-have but essential for any organization that aims to attract top-tier talent.

Digital Transformation in Talent Management

The first step towards creating an optimized candidate journey is embracing the digital transformation in talent management. Digital platforms and tools, such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), Video Interview platforms, and Digital Assessment tools, streamline the process and make it more accessible to both recruiters and candidates.

Role of Digital Assessment and Remote Interview Tools

In the age of remote work, remote interview tools are no longer optional. They are vital for reducing friction in hiring. These tools can replicate the real-life interview experience and often include features like automated scheduling, AI-based insights, and multi-party video calls.

Measuring Candidate Engagement Metrics

How do you know if your optimized recruitment process is working? The answer lies in recruitment analytics. Tools are available that can measure candidate experience objectively by assessing metrics like time-to-hire, candidate satisfaction scores, and offer acceptance rates.

Best Practices for Human Resources

• Personalized Communication : Personalization is not just for marketing; it plays a crucial role in recruitment as well. Tailored emails, regular updates, and customized feedback can make candidates feel valued.
• Transparent Process : Nothing disengages a candidate more than a lack of communication or clarity. A transparent application process can significantly improve the job application experience.
• Efficient Onboarding : The candidate journey doesn’t end with a job offer. An effective onboarding experience is crucial for long-term engagement and retention.

In today’s digital world, the candidate journey should be as smooth as the user experience on a well-designed app. By adopting recruitment best practices and leveraging digital recruitment tools, HR professionals can significantly enhance talent acquisition strategies.

By focusing on seamless recruitment and candidate engagement, we not only optimize the chances of landing the best talent but also lay the groundwork for a fruitful, long-term relationship with them. In the end, it’s all about creating a mutually beneficial environment where both parties are set up for success.

So, are you ready to optimize your recruitment funnel and design a seamless candidate journey? Start by implementing digital assessment and remote interview tools, and you’ll be well on your way to shaping the future of hiring in your organization.

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Candidate Journey: The Ultimate Guide to Unlock Hiring Success

April 2, 2023

Tima Rassool

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Sometimes, it takes us quite some time to make up our minds when we purchase something online. We read reviews, we ask our friends, we Google the product or service, and we scroll endlessly through other websites. Recruitment is no different.

When candidates apply for jobs, they are looking to build a certain level of trust with your company before they decide to click on the “Apply” button. Candidates are taken through various touchpoints and interactions with your company before, during, and after the hiring process. This is called a candidate journey.

Now you may ask… why is the candidate journey so important? What a great question!

Today, we will touch base on what is a candidate journey and how to craft the best one for your company!

What is the candidate journey?

Job hunting is no easy feat for candidates. Especially since they have to go through a series of experiences that can make or break their impression of your company. That’s why it’s crucial for businesses to create a memorable candidate experience journey.

So what’s a candidate journey, you ask? It’s a fancy way of saying all the different ways an active job seeker interacts with your company during the hiring process. From the first time they hear about the job opening to the moment they receive a job offer – every touchpoint matters.

To make sure your company is putting its best foot forward, you must create a positive candidate experience that is seamless and above all, interactive. This visual representation will help you see the hiring process from the candidate’s perspective. Is it smooth sailing? Is it memorable? Or are there some rough patches along the way?

By understanding your candidate journey stages, you’ll be able to gather valuable information that can guide, boost, and fine-tune your recruitment strategy. Plus, you’ll be better equipped to tailor your messaging to meet their needs. After all, finding the right person for the job is a two-way street.

So don’t let a bumpy candidate journey scare away your top talent! Take the time to map it out and make improvements. Your future employees will thank you.

What are the candidate journey stages?

Let’s be real here: creating an outstanding candidate experience is a marathon, not a sprint. The candidate journey itself consists of six critical stages, and each presents a unique opportunity for recruiters to make a lasting impression. With a tailored approach at each stage, recruiters can shape the candidate’s behavior, attitude, and overall experience. With that being said, we break down the stages for you below, so you can take your candidate recruitment journey from where it is now – to where you want it to be!

1. Awareness

The journey of every active job seeker begins with awareness; a crucial stage where they discover and learn more about your job opening. Now, they might stumble upon it on LinkedIn, Indeed, Glassdoor, or your branded career page. But attracting top-notch talent at this critical stage can ultimately save both you and the candidate valuable time.

To achieve this, it’s essential to create a strategic plan that involves crafting an ideal candidate persona and incorporating it into the job description. Not only that, but you also need to make sure that the content on your career page is relevant, accurate, and not misleading.

2. Consideration

After candidates take the time to learn more about your company, the next stage involves considering your company as a potential employer. This is where they begin to research more about your culture, work environment, and perks and benefits. They might even surf your website, social media platform, or online review sites. Only then will they be able to develop an initial impression of your company and begin to assess whether or not it really aligns with their personal values and career goals.

3. Interest

This stage is a pivotal one. Why you may ask? Simply because the candidate in this stage either cultivates a strong interest in your company or loses interest altogether. Keep in mind that candidates are always exploring different job opportunities and trying to gauge if they would be a good fit for the role. Therefore, to pique their interest, you must showcase your unique company culture, highlight your competitive advantages, and provide a glimpse into what it would be like to work for your company.

4. Application

Now, for the most tricky part: the application process. After top talent feels enticed enough to join your company, they’ll take the initiative to apply to one of your vacancies. This candidate journey stage ultimately marks the start of the recruitment process. So the job seekers will send in their applications and cover letters for review. Essentially recruiters must craft compelling job descriptions in order to get more qualified candidates to apply.

5. Selection

Once candidates submit their applications, it’s showtime! Now, the ball is in the recruiter’s court. The selection process might differ from one company to the other. For example, this stage might include a video assessment, background check, reference check , or talent assessment. At the end of the stage, recruiters will be able to seamlessly gauge the suitability and fit of the candidates in order to move them to the most important stage; the hired stage.

This is the last stage of the candidate experience journey – where the candidate either gets hired or rejected based on their performance. However, all the previous steps will dictate whether or not the candidate will accept the offer or spread negative word of mouth. For example, if they had a seamless candidate journey, they’ll accept the offer in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they experienced a complicated hiring process, they’ll spread the word to their network.

What makes a good candidate journey?

When it comes to crafting an excellent candidate journey, there’s no one-size-fits-all. All it takes is to take candidates through a seamless process from start to finish. The end goal is simple: make sure the hiring process is memorable and the offer is irresistible. Now, to make sure top candidates are having a blast throughout the hiring process, there are a few things you need to set in stone. The first is clear and transparent communication.

Who doesn’t love being kept in the loop, right? The second is a smooth-sailing hiring process. At the end of the day, candidates will be more enticed to accept an offer when the hiring process takes days, not months. The third is your employer branding . Your candidates need to know more about the company culture and work environment before deciding to be a part of it.

How to map out the perfect candidate journey?

Each stage in the candidate journey holds the power to determine whether your best candidates will blossom into exceptional hires or drop out of the process altogether. To make sure the candidate journey is your strongest differentiator – there are a couple of steps that you must take first. Wondering what they are? We’ve broken them down into easily digestible steps for you.

Step 1: Identify your candidate persona

Crafting a stellar candidate journey starts with one key ingredient: the candidate. So, before you hit the recruitment trail, it’s crucial to come up with a very captivating candidate persona – a compelling one that embodies the perfect fit for your role. Think: skills, drive, passion, character, and the demographics that best align with your company. By creating the ideal candidate persona, you’ll not only attract top talent, but you’ll also ignite a powerful sense of purpose and connection.

Step 2: Pinpoint your candidate’s needs at every stage

During the candidate journey, it’s important to understand their wants and needs at each stage. To do this, identify what motivates the candidate’s behavior, thoughts, and emotions. Here are the candidate’s needs at each stage:

• Awareness: The candidate wants to learn more about the company and what it does.
• Consideration: The candidate in this stage considers the benefits of joining the company.
• Interest: The candidate wants to know what sets this company apart from others.
• Application: The candidate is eager to learn more about the duration of each hiring stage.
• Selection: The candidate wants to know if they are qualified to make the cut.
• Hire: The candidate wonders what will happen after they accept the job offer.

Step 3: Determine the candidate journey touchpoints

Attracting top talent is not just about posting job ads and hoping for the best. It’s about creating a personalized experience for your ideal candidate at every step of their journey. But, where do you start? Well, it’s simple – put on your candidate persona hat and start thinking like them!

Picture yourself as the candidate, and ask yourself these questions: Where can I learn more about the company? How can I compare this company to its competitors? How do I apply for the position? What happens during the selection process? What do I do if I get hired? The answers to these questions will help you identify all the potential touchpoints that your candidate might have with your company.

Now, we know there are a ton of candidate journey touchpoints to consider, but don’t worry! We’re here to help you prioritize. To start, we suggest learning more about your candidates’ online behavior. Do they use social media? Do they frequent job comparison sites? Or do they prefer to visit your website directly? Knowing these answers will help you tailor your approach and focus on the touchpoints that matter most to your ideal candidate.

Step 4: Create a visual representation

Now, you’ve made it to the final step – the fun part! It’s time to take all the insights you’ve gained from the previous steps and bring them to life in a visually stunning way. So, it’s time to let your creative juices flow!

There is no right or wrong way to do this. You can choose the method that works best for you. You can sketch it out on a whiteboard, add some colourful sticky notes, or go all out and print it on a massive billboard. The sky’s the limit, and the ball is in your court!

Our only suggestion is to ensure that the information is presented in a way that’s easy to understand, visually appealing, and less complex. You want to create a visual map that’s a feast for the eyes and helps you tell the story of your candidate’s journey.

So, go ahead, unleash your creative side, and have some fun creating a candidate journey map that’s as unique as your company’s culture.

Build an exceptional candidate experience with recruitment software

We’re sure you’re well aware of the incredible benefits of recruitment software. But did you know that it can monumentally create a wonderful candidate journey? So, what do we mean by that?

A candidate’s journey is no different than a buyer’s journey. Buyers look for services and products to purchase, whereas candidates look for compelling job opportunities. This is ultimately why candidates need to be treated just like customers. In the same way, you choose your candidates, your candidates are choosing you too.

To create a wonderful candidate experience, you need to have a solid understanding of what the candidate’s journey should look like. Nowadays, companies and talent acquisition leaders need to focus more on the candidate experience, as the failure to do so could have negative implications on the brand image. This is because a large percentage of candidates share their negative experiences online and it’s very easy for such stories to spread like wildfire on social media channels.

That’s a wrap!

Now that you have your candidate experience map, you’re ready to power up your recruitment efforts and create a seamless and delightful candidate experience. So go ahead and put your map to work!

With your journey map in hand, you can analyze every step of the process and identify bottlenecks that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. By crafting your unique map, you will gain valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your recruitment process and put your research findings into action.

And you’re all set! Good luck and have fun creating your own unique candidate journey map. If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line!

A wordsmith, storyteller, and content strategist – Tima is an MBA graduate with 6+ years of experience in the world of HR. With over 2,000 blogs under her belt, Tima's expertise and insights have helped businesses across the globe take their recruitment to the next level and stay ahead of the curve.

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Candidate Journey Map: What It Is & How to Create One

November 27, 2023 | Recruiting Insights

They go through a series of steps before consumers make a big purchasing decision. They conduct research online, look at reviews from other customers, talk to friends and family, chat with a sales associate, and more before ultimately deciding to swipe their credit card. 

Choosing an employer is a similarly significant life decision, so it’s no surprise that candidates go through a comparable series of steps when they’re applying for jobs. This is known as the candidate journey, and mapping it out can help you refine your hiring funnel to attract more of the best talent. 

What Is the Candidate Journey?

The candidate journey is a person’s sequential experience when applying for a job with your company. It takes place in phases, each progressing logically into the next one.  

Each company will define the parts of its candidate journey a little differently, but here are the most common distinct phases:

• Awareness – candidate learns about the company and its openings
• Consideration – candidate gathers information to help them decide whether to apply
• Application – candidate makes decision to apply and submits application materials
• Screening – candidate provides additional information to support their candidacy
• Interview – candidate interacts with company decision-makers
• Offer – candidate receives an offer of employment
• Hire – candidate accepts offer
• Onboarding – candidate begins work

What Is a Candidate Journey Map?

A candidate journey map is a visual representation of the candidate’s interactions with your employer brand while participating in your hiring process. It’s laid out a lot like a flowchart and consists of a series of touchpoints: individual engagements a candidate experiences. 

Some examples of touchpoints that could be included on a candidate journey map are:

• Job postings
• Employment ads
• Email campaigns
• Social media posts
• Your careers page
• Text messages
• Chatbot interactions
• Hiring events
• Educational programs
• Interactions with company employees
• Pre-employment assessments
• The job application
• The interview
• The offer letter

Example of a Candidate Journey Map

Here’s an example of how these touchpoints might look when mapped visually:

Benefits of Mapping Your Candidate Journey

Helps create an intentional candidate experience.

Mapping your candidate journey ensures that the experience a candidate has with your employer brand is not random but strategic. It helps you verify that each touchpoint contributes to your organization’s more extensive staffing and operational goals. 

Informs stronger recruitment marketing

In each phase of the candidate journey, the candidate is in a specific mindset, with certain questions, concerns, and interests. With a clearly mapped candidate journey, creating content tailored to each phase is easy. It answers the candidate’s questions, preemptively addresses their concerns, and nurtures their interest in becoming part of the team. 

Increases recruiting ROI

Because a candidate journey map puts your recruiting efforts into visual form, it’s easy to see where these efforts are paying off or falling flat. This reveals bottlenecks and pain points in your hiring funnel that you can improve on to save time and money. As a result of this continuous improvement, you’ll convert more prospects into applicants and more applicants into hires, improving all of your recruiting metrics . 

Simplifies recruiters’ work

A candidate journey map keeps recruiters on track with a clear outline of the next steps that must be taken after every action item. This helps recruiting teammates avoid duplicating efforts and also helps pinpoint where automation can help further simplify tasks. 

Aids in candidate nurturing

Only some prospects will apply after their first interaction with your brand. The decision could often occur months or even years after the initial engagement. Having a candidate journey map helps nurture these candidates over the long term so that your company is a top choice when they are ready to apply. 

Speeds up hiring

A candidate journey map can help you hire faster by maintaining a consistent line of communication with candidates and ensuring each step in the hiring process proceeds promptly. 

5 Simple Steps to Create a Candidate Journey Map

1. develop a candidate persona.

A candidate persona is a comprehensive profile of the person you target. It’s what you’ll use to customize the content within your candidate journey and should inform all of your recruiting efforts. 

Developing a candidate persona forces you to look at your journey through the candidate’s eyes, which can reveal insights and opportunities you might not have identified otherwise.

Related: Learn how to create a candidate persona here. 

2. Analyze and map existing touchpoints

List the touchpoints that already exist in your candidate journey. This should include everything you’re currently doing to engage candidates. 

Then, identify which phase of the candidate journey each touchpoint belongs to and map them in order. You can use a simple table, like we’ve shown above, or an online flowchart maker like Lucid to create a more detailed visual. 

3. Identify touchpoint shortfalls

As you look at your candidate journey on paper, are there any phases that need to be more light or completely lacking in touchpoints? Are there areas that seem too bloated with excessive steps or interactions?

Add touchpoints or remove them from your journey map as needed. Once again, you should be thinking about the candidate’s mindset as they’re experiencing each one and considering whether each phase makes sense as part of the whole. 

4. Use touchpoints to inform your recruiting content

The touchpoints in your journey are each tied to a particular piece of recruiting content. It might be content in the traditional sense, like an email campaign, or an alternative type of ‘content’ like a live conversation or a speaker presentation at an event. Regardless of the type of content, you should be thinking strategically about each one. 

An excellent way to use your map to inform your recruiting content is to think about the questions and concerns a candidate will likely have while experiencing each interaction. For example, maybe one of the most common questions you get from candidates in the offer stage is about your health insurance benefits. This means creating some additional content on this topic could be useful. 

You could add a new touchpoint during the consideration phase that includes a video overview of your benefits package, which will help candidates assess whether your benefits suit their needs before applying. 

5. Gather feedback and optimize

Don’t just use your best judgment about the quality of your candidate journey map; gather data from the actual candidates experiencing it firsthand to help you improve. Use surveys, interviews, and forms to collect candidate feedback, then incorporate it to optimize the flow of your candidate journey and its content. 

By building a strategic candidate journey map and creating tailored content for each touchpoint, you’ll develop a highly informative and engaging candidate experience, ultimately leading to better and faster hires.

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About Pete Newsome

Pete Newsome is the President of 4 Corner Resources, the staffing and recruiting firm he founded in 2005. 4 Corner is a member of the American Staffing Association and TechServe Alliance, and the top-rated staffing company in Central Florida. Recent awards and recognition include being named to Forbes’ Best Recruiting Firms in America, The Seminole 100, and The Golden 100. Pete also founded ze ngig , to offer comprehensive career advice, tools, and resources for students and professionals. He hosts two podcasts, Hire Calling and Finding Career Zen, and is blazing new trails in recruitment marketing with the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology. C onnect with Pete on LinkedIn

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• May 5, 2022

What is a Candidate Journey Map? (And Why You Need One)

Any time you need to hire someone, you go through a process. You put out job ads, filter your candidate pool, schedule and conduct interviews, review the results, and make a decision. In broad strokes, progressing through those stages is known as the candidate journey. Let’s say that you want to improve your hiring process. So, you ask questions.

• What platforms that you post your job to have the best results?
• At what point in the process do most candidates voluntarily drop off?
• What turns people away from your hiring process?

You may or may not be able to answer these. If you can’t, then the chances are that you don’t have a great, nuanced, and granular view of your candidate journey.

Defining the Candidate Journey Map

That’s where the candidate journey map comes in. The journey map is a map – a literal, visual representation – of your candidate’s journey. Or, more specifically, a map of different paths that candidates can take through your candidate experience, because there are often multiple paths through the system.

For example, one candidate finding your job ad on Indeed and another finding your listing on your careers page have different experiences. So, too, does a candidate who was referred to your company by an existing employee. All three of these candidates are part of your hiring process, but they make their way through the process in different ways, and that difference in the journey can have a significant impact on hiring success.

A candidate journey map is a map of the various touchpoints that candidates hit along the way. Touchpoints are specific events that happen as part of the candidate journey. There are seven defined touchpoints in most frameworks, though what specifically happens at each touchpoint can vary.

The seven are:

• Consideration
• Application

Every candidate journey map begins with awareness and progresses through the seven until either the candidate drops off willingly, is eliminated from consideration, or is successfully hired at the end of the journey. Note: If you think this looks similar to a sales funnel, you’re right. The process of mapping a candidate’s journey is very similar to mapping a customer’s journey through a sales funnel. The primary difference is that the candidate journey likely has far less in the way of analytics already in place.

However, different candidate journeys progress through these steps in different ways. For example, the first touchpoint is Awareness. It’s the touchpoint of the potential candidate discovering that your company is hiring for a role and that it may be a role they could take. That can happen in different ways, such as:

• Viewing your job ads on a job board.
• Talking to your representative at a job fair.
• Visiting the careers portal on your website.
• Talking to an existing employee that they know socially.

This is a simple list of four different starting points for example candidate journeys.

Note, as well, that the candidate journey is not necessarily linear. Just as a potential customer might bounce between awareness and consideration, a potential candidate may also bounce between stages as they investigate, gather more details, and eventually decide to apply.

How to Develop a Candidate Journey Map

Developing a map of your candidate journey – or, more accurately, a framework for mapping multiple possible candidate journeys – is a multi-step process. So, let’s go through the steps.

Step 1: Defining a Candidate Persona

Much like with sales defining a customer persona, HR will define a candidate persona for a candidate journey map.

A candidate persona is like a “character sheet” or a profile for your candidates. It’s semi-fictional, though it may be informed by the actual experiences of existing employees and the data you have on your candidates.

A candidate persona will have a lot of potentially useful details, such as:

• Demographics. What is their current position, skill level, location, current salary, and experience levels? Note that you should ignore demographics that aren’t relevant or are protected information , such as race, religion, age, etc.
• Goals. Why are they changing jobs?
• Are they active or passive?
• What channels do they use to look for new career opportunities?
• What are their skills and personality attributes, as measured by the pre-employment screening you use?
• What motivates and influences their decisions for employment?
• What sources of information do they trust?

Some companies stop at the first handful of attributes, while others build more robust personas. You have to find the right balance. The narrower and more specific the persona, the more potentially useful it can be, but the less likely it is to be on-target for your candidates.

Step 2: Set Up Your Touchpoint Framework

Above, we defined the seven touchpoints a candidate goes through to become an employee. Here, you set up a framework to track them. Since your candidate journey map is an actual, graphical map, you will want to assign each touchpoint a color, icon, and label to make tracking easier. Here’s an example image from TalentLyft , and here’s a simplified example of how a single journey map might look .

As you can see, candidates will likely bounce around in the early stages, but once they reach the later stages, they will be “locked-in” and progress from one to the next. The turning point is the application; once they decide to apply, the decision becomes yours rather than theirs, though they always have the opportunity to opt-out.

Step 3: Define Candidate Needs

Once you have your framework in place, consider it from the perspective of your candidate persona.

Given what you know about this archetype of candidate, what does the candidate want or need at each stage of the process?

• Awareness : Who is this company, what do they do, and are they hiring for my role?
• Consideration : Would working for this company improve my life, work/life balance, or career?
• Interest : What is the work culture like for this company? What makes this company better than another company in the same niche?

Each step of the way, the candidates want something. Your goal is to define what they want. Different candidates will have different needs, so this is a per-persona definition. For example, a novice fresh out of university will have different interests and needs than an experienced professional in the same field. People with families will have different needs than people without, and so on.

Step 4: Identify Specific Touchpoints

The fourth step is identifying the places and mechanisms candidates will use to fill their needs at each stage.

For example, during the consideration stage, the candidate will be researching your company. They might check:

• Your website About Us, History, and Careers pages.
• Your social media profiles.
• Social media results for searches for your company name.
• Reddit discussions about your company.
• Reviews of your product or service on marketplaces or review sites.

This helps you build out a complete map of the journey for that given candidate persona. Where do they find out about you, where do they go to learn more, who do they talk to, and what channels do they use?

Step 5: Build Your Map

Remember, a candidate journey map is not an abstract, conceptual document. It is an actual, graphical map that you build out using the information gathered in the previous steps.

For each persona, create a document that includes information about the persona. Then, for each touchpoint stage, define:

• What the candidate is thinking, what they’re looking for, and what they want to find.
• Where they will go to seek out this information.
• What channels you can use to reach them with the relevant information at the right time.

You build up this table of information and can even map out the bounces candidates take from stage to stage because those bounces can indicate something you can do to streamline the candidate journey.

Your map can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. For example, Rally Recruitment offers a template with more space for nuance, including defining the candidate’s expectations, experiences, and questions separately. In truth, you can build as simple or complex a series of maps as you want, so long as you can still use them to improve your candidate journey overall.

Making Use of Your Candidate Journey Map

A single candidate journey map helps you define and optimize the journey of one particular kind of candidate. That’s why you define many different candidate personas at the start; each one has their own map, and the data from each map, and the data you get in aggregate, can help you optimize your hiring process.

The first thing you should do is analyze your maps individually and your overall map to identify common issues. Do most candidates reach the consideration stage and linger for a long time before applying? Do many candidates apply, despite not matching the roles you have open? Do many candidates fall off the journey at a particular stage?

These are all signs of issues. Maybe there’s a prominent piece of information they tend to encounter that makes them second-guess their choice. Maybe they struggle to even find the option to pursue applying. Maybe some part of your hiring process, like salary ranges or an encounter with a particular HR staff member, turns them away.

It can also be worthwhile to look into the various channels your candidates use to find information about you and see what they’re seeing. When they search Google for your company, what do they find? When they ask about you on Reddit, what do they find?

Another thing you can do is submit surveys to actual candidates throughout your candidate journeys. Assign each real candidate to the persona that most closely fits them, and ask them questions about that persona you would want to know. You can then use their answers for additional information or leads to improve your candidate experience further.

Your goal with this process is to identify roadblocks, poor information, negative reviews, lack of information, or other problems. Any time a candidate hits a stumbling block, it’s an opportunity for you to work to remove that barrier.

• Get negative reviews removed, refute them, or use SEO to out-weigh them, so they’re harder to find.
• Create accounts on Reddit or other media to offer alternative positions and refute misinformation.
• Add information from frequently asked questions to your website or careers page so candidates can find it more readily.

Then, continue to monitor your candidate journeys and see how they change. Ideally, each change you make should improve the outcomes and streamline the application and hiring process.

Don’t forget to monitor candidates after you hire them, and look for ways to optimize long-term success in your workers, as well as just success in hiring.

Keep Improving

The key to using the candidate journey map is to improve every aspect of hiring continually. This means improving your hiring process, but it also means improving your candidate experience.

For example, you may find over time that one persona you developed seems to encompass two different groups of similar people. Instead of working around this, split the candidate profile into two distinct profiles with candidate journeys of their own. Doing so better allows you to track and optimize for those journeys.

Your candidate journey map is a living document, or rather, a series of documents for each potential persona. And as companies change over time and people change over time, the information in these documents will change over time. It’s up to you to keep on top of the information you receive, use it to edit and adjust your hiring process, and get the most out of your candidate pool.

Do you or your company have any questions about what a candidate journey map is or why you may need one? Was there anything we mentioned in this post that you would like a little more clarification on? If you answered yes to either of these questions, please feel free to drop us a comment down below, and we’ll get a conversation started! We’d be more than happy to assist you however we can in better understanding the topic.

Shannon Molarius

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Mapping and optimising your digital candidate journey

Increasingly, candidates expect to be able to apply for jobs digitally. It offers a more convenient method of application for candidates, and it can cut hiring costs for employers.

But using digital hiring methods requires effective mapping and optimisation. We’ve picked some of the most effective methods of providing a smooth and effective digital candidate journey.

Choosing where to post your job ads or source new talent is vital in finding the best candidates. Using tried and tested marketing approaches can help you to reach out to new candidates digitally. Undertake research into your ideal candidates and build personas for them, find out where online is the best place to reach them, whether that’s on job sites like Indeed, or social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter.

Additionally, through AI, it’s possible to automatically advertise your job opening to candidates across multiple job sites in minutes, freeing up the time that recruiters would normally spend uploading and reaching out manually. This means that recruitment strategies can be targeted and efficient, even reaching a larger pool of passive candidates who may not be seeking a new role at the time. This means that AI can narrow the candidate pool and the quality of candidates applying will be much higher across the board, so you can spend less time looking at unsuitable CVs.

Consideration and interest

Employer branding here is key. When a potential applicant is considering whether to spend time applying for a job, they are likely to be scouring your company website. It’s therefore important to be very clear about what your company offers its employees, the kind of company culture you nurture, and the benefits that applicants can expect to receive if hired. This is your employee value proposition.

An organisation’s employee value proposition (EVP) refers to the core benefits that are offered to employees. This can include training opportunities, flexible work schedules, company culture, uniform, access to a company car, and any other employee perks or benefits that come with working for the organisation.

Your EVP forms the centre of your employer brand as a powerful tool in attracting the skills and people you need. It’s a good idea to pinpoint exactly what your EVP is, which in health and social care settings can include a varied workday, flexible hours, and a fulfilling role that makes a difference.

Including recruitment pages on your website and including recruitment within your digital marketing and outreach strategy is an ideal place to showcase your employer branding and EVP.

It’s important to be honest here, try not to exaggerate how great your business is for employees, and manage expectations smartly to ensure new employees are not faced with a shock when they start their new job. This protects your turnover rates, and helps you to identify employees who are a good fit for the company.

Application

Digital applications are a great way manage and quickly identify promising applications, as well as provide a convenient way for candidates to apply digitally.

Be careful about the length of your application, however, as long and complex application forms tend to have high drop off rates. Consider exactly what information you need to know from a candidate and try to simplify the input fields as much as possible – if an answer can be multiple choice or a tick box then not only is it quicker for applicants to complete, but also quicker for you to analyse.  

When there’s a high candidate to position ratio, AI technology can speed up the decision making process by analysing applications and video interviews to group candidates into highly recommended, recommended, and not recommended in a way that correlates well with the company’s own assessments. This has been shown to cut time to hire in half, reduce candidate dropout rates by 30%, and triple cost savings.

Additionally, AI can be a useful tool to combat the unconscious bias of recruiters. AI can be programmed to ignore certain pieces of information when screening candidates, such as ethnicity or immigrant status, removing any unconscious biases that recruiters may have towards people from minority backgrounds and making the process fairer and more inclusive.

Throughout your selection process, it’s important to plan and deliver regular updates and consistent communication with candidates. This ensures that candidates are aware of the process of their application, and increases engagement, while lack of communication, and not notifying an applicant of the outcome of their submission leads to candidates feeling less inclined to apply again in the future.

AI can automate communications to candidates at key points in the recruitment process, whether that’s acknowledging receipt of an application, inviting to interview or letting them know that their application has been unsuccessful. This makes a better experience for all candidates and saves recruiters a lot of time.

Hiring and onboarding

Once a job has been offered and accepted, it’s then time to go through screening and onboarding processes. In the UK, it’s a legal requirement for all employees to undergo a right to work check, to ensure that they’re legally able to work and earn money in this country.

Until very recently, this process had to include meeting the new employee in person and handling their physical, original documents that prove identification and right to work in order to satisfy the legal requirements.

Now, however, since the pandemic made it impossible to meet in person, this process can be done online using a certified identification verification service provider. This means that employees have a smoother onboarding process and can be based anywhere in the world.

It’s important to still be open to face to face meetings, however, as digital right to work checks require a valid UK passport. 1 in 5 candidates don’t have this, so in order to maintain fair hiring practices, ensure whether or not a candidate can undergo right to work checks digitally doesn’t impact on who is offered the job.

How can Reed Screening help?

With over 60 years of experience in recruitment, and over 10 years’ experience as screening specialists, Reed Screening is ideally placed to advise your organisation on the best way to ensure that your digital recruitment processes are beneficial to your company’s performance.

At Reed Screening, we’re dedicated to making the recruitment journey as smooth as possible for both employers and candidates, to help our clients source and retain the talent they need . Speak to our team today to find out how we can streamline and enhance your recruitment journey.

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The Candidate Journey: How To Create, Map And Measure It

Most of us read several reviews before pulling the trigger on a purchase. As consumers, we prefer to learn about a company, product or service before we invest time and money in it.

Turns out this is pretty natural. We tend to interact with brands because they connect with us emotionally or they can provide a solution to a problem we need to solve.

Companies try to establish a relationship and a certain level of trust with you, often through a series of interactions, before asking if you want to buy something. This is known as the customer journey.

Recruiting is no different. Candidates rarely just show up to your website ‘ready to apply’. They like to learn about your company culture and opportunities before they’re ready to dive into the application process.

This decision-making cycle is known as the candidate journey.

What is the candidate journey?

The candidate journey is the set of experiences that job seekers and candidates go through during their job hunt.

There’s one very important thing to note here. The candidate journey starts long before the application. It starts the very first time a candidate ‘touches’ your brand.

At each stage of this journey, recruiters and hiring managers can do different things to impact candidate behavior, experience, and attitude.

In short, companies have the opportunity to influence candidates enough to turn them from passive strangers into enthusiastic applicants.

Getting the candidate journey right can also lead to more referrals, increased job applications, reduced time-to-hire, improved quality of hire, and a stronger employer brand .

Why does the candidate journey matter?

Nearly 60% of candidates have a negative candidate experience, and it often comes down to a lack of thought being applied to the candidate journey.

There is a web of different online and offline interactions between candidates and your company. Every time you interact with a candidate, you have an opportunity to build your relationship and increase the likelihood that they will feel connected to your brand.

But if you’re not careful, these interactions can also lead to disaster. If any of these critical interactions give candidates a negative experience, you’re at risk of doing some real damage to your employer brand – which may be very difficult to repair.

For many brands, candidates can also be customers, so a negative candidate experience also has the potential to impact the bottom line.

How to create a great candidate journey

A great candidate journey doesn’t just happen overnight. Making sure the candidate experience is optimal at every touchpoint requires a lot of planning and hard work.

We’ve broken down some of the most important areas to get started with:

Fill out your own application

There’s a severe disconnect over the application experience in particular – 60% of job seekers quit in the middle of filling out online job applications because of their length or complexity.

And according to Appcast, companies can increase their application completion rate by up to 365% by simply decreasing the length or complexity of their job applications.

High dropoff rates lead to loss of top talent and damage to the employer brand from candidates who are frustrated with the process. Application abandonment can also increase an organization’s cost-per-hire .

Some employers believe that a lengthy application process is a positive thing because it “weeds out” applicants. They often believe that the ‘good talent’ should be dedicated enough to fill out the complex forms if they really want the job.

In reality, the opposite is true – the best candidates have plenty of opportunities. They aren’t as willing to jump through hoops and will happily go where the grass looks greener.

Taking your own application is the easiest way to walk a mile in your candidates’ shoes and see what needs to change. Apply with a fake name and details, and take an honest look at your process.

Does it make you more or less enthusiastic to work at your company?

Focus on relationships not resumes

This is something we say a lot at Beamery. ‘Online people’ are not simply candidates or consumers. They are both. And they look at purchasing decisions and applications in a very similar way.

This can create a problem for recruiting teams. Marketing departments have got extremely good at providing customized experiences for consumers. They pour money into the consumer journey, investing in relationships with the brand and making it as easy as possible for consumers to buy.

Today’s consumers expect high levels of personalization and so do today’s candidates. Yet nearly 7 5% of candidates don’t even receive responses from potential employers after filling out their applications.

Instead of feeling like a company cares about them and is invested in their future, they often feel like they’re throwing their resume and CV into a black hole.

Companies need to move from a transactional approach (e.g. filling a role) to a relationship-first approach (building value with candidates whether they apply or not).

If you want your competitive advantage to be your talent, you need to learn from marketing departments and focus on building relationships, not simply collecting resumes.

Map your ideal candidate journey

Sit down with your team and map out what you want your ideal candidate journey to look like. Storyboard the entire process from start to finish – what does best-in-class really look like?

Here are a few questions that you should start with when planning out your new and improved candidate journey:

• Who is your ideal candidate?
• What does your candidate persona look like? And what’s the best way to interact with those candidates online?
• What do you want candidates to feel when they first come across your brand’s online presence?
• How regularly can you reasonably expect your team to communicate with candidates? Is there a way that you can use automation to make a candidate’s experience more personalized?
• How can you make candidates feel welcome, valued and well informed at every stage of your process?
• What is the best way to nurture candidates that aren’t ready to apply and keep them warm for the future?

Learn from your mistakes

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

No one has a perfect candidate journey. There’s always room for improvement and optimization. You can always do more to strengthen your brand, improve your process and delight candidates.

There’s another simple way to learn what’s currently broken and try and fix it.

Ask your candidates.

They’re the people that are actually going through your process and they’re the ones that you need to impress.

Some companies survey candidates at the end of the application process. This is a step in the right direction, but typically the survey data sits in an excel file, never to be opened again.

The majority of companies are in even worse shape. They have no idea what candidates think until the reviews start rolling in on Glassdoor (a very public way to find out).

Ideally, you should get feedback from candidates at every stage of the recruiting process. This way, you can see bottlenecks and issues immediately, and put fixes in place to improve the candidate experience before too much damage is done.

Measuring and monitoring the candidate experience is something that Beamery enables companies to do, but even if you don’t have a Recruitment Marketing platform , you should at least be collecting feedback in some shape or form.

The bottom line is, if you aren’t focused on building relationships with candidates and providing a high-quality candidate experience, you will lose top talent.

Today’s best candidates are typically only on the market for about 10 days , meaning you have a very short window of time to impress them and get them excited about the possibility of working for your company.

With thoughtful planning and the right tools and technology, employers can improve their candidate experience and as a result, can attract and hire high-quality talent.

Learn more about how Beamery can help organizations provide highly personalized candidate experiences to win top talent.

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How can digital transformation impact the candidate journey?

• November 17, 2022
• Jason Martin, Strategy Director - Access Recruitment

Digital transformation is a key driver for recruitment agencies looking to build relationships with clients and candidates effectively, as well as to drive internal efficiencies. Given the UK unemployment rate for June to August 2022 was at its lowest in almost 50 years at 3.5% , recruiters must differentiate themselves from the rest to attract top talent.

Thanks to the plethora of software currently available to support recruitment agencies, such as automated screening, chatbots and optimised recruitment websites, there are tools to aid every stage of the candidate journey.

Attracting candidate attention Step one of the recruitment journey involves candidate attraction, and the landscape has become increasingly digital across all sectors in recent years. Gone are the days of candidates embarking on face-to-face job searches – today’s job search is conducted almost exclusively online. Recruitment agencies need to meet candidates where they are, especially in the context of the candidate shortage that exists across all markets right now.

Usually, a candidate’s first engagement with an agency is through their website. So, investing in a high-performing website built on a recruitment specific SaaS (Software as a Service) platform will pay dividends. Aside from being designed to optimise candidate conversions, agencies won’t have to pay additional amounts to external developers for every change, as they can refresh their own web content with a full Content Management System. The cloud-based system is automatically upgraded with new functionality, and hosting costs are included, with GDPR and security issues taken care of.

Reducing time-to-hire through automated screening Glassdoor reports that it takes an average of 27.3 days for a candidate to go through the hiring process. Following significant time and investment in attracting good quality candidates, agencies must ensure that all compliance requirements are met efficiently to avoid losing candidate interest and missing out on placements to their competitors.

The candidate market has tightened due to post-Brexit immigration rules, regulatory change, and skills shortages resulting in a higher number of vacancies and less available talent. Workers are increasingly likely to receive offers through multiple channels, and consultants must move candidates through the recruitment process quickly. Only a swift and professional screening process will secure a candidate who may be applying for several positions simultaneously with a view to taking the one that completes the quickest.

Agencies can streamline their screening processes with the support of pre-employment screening software, which is designed to help businesses to stay abreast of changing legislation, deliver a better candidate experience, and avoid reputational damage. Aside from these key drivers, the  automation of screening processes can improve efficiency, streamline operations and lower costs.   Automating screening processes and integrating all checks into one platform, without the need to manage third party relationships, significantly reduces the time-to-hire.

Technology as a candidate relationship enabler Throughout the candidate journey, recruiters actively want to provide good candidate care, but the volume of applications can make this impossible without supporting technology. Staffing agencies are essentially human capital institutions, serving candidates through recruitment consultants, but in our online world there inevitably needs to be a high degree of digital communication. Automation provides a helping hand in this area.

Perhaps surprisingly, the number of candidates polled as part of the CandEs research who are “extremely likely to refer others” increased by 27% when a chatbot answered questions during the application process. If the automated communication is received in a timely and professional manner this is proven not to create brand detractors. It is a lack of communication that fosters negativity, not necessarily how it’s delivered.

Digital transformation provides a wealth of new opportunities for recruitment agencies to streamline and enhance the candidate journey. They should however deploy these new technologies with careful consideration, optimising at different stages throughout the process and reviewing the impact on the candidate experience.

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HR Tutorial

• Virtual Interviews and Candidate Experience

In the fast-paced, ever-changing realm of  Digital HR Transformation , the methods and tactics surrounding talent acquisition and onboarding are experiencing groundbreaking shifts. Traditional ways of hiring and introducing new talent to organizations are being eclipsed by more modern, efficient, and wide-reaching strategies. One of the most notable changes has been the rise of  virtual interviews  as a central component of recruitment processes.

Table of Contents

The driving force behind these transformations is a potent combination of technological advancements and the increasing globalization of the workforce. In earlier times, the scope of hiring was often limited by geographical boundaries and logistical challenges. Now, however, companies possess the tools and platforms to seamlessly engage with potential hires from all corners of the globe. This newfound capability has opened the doors to vast  global talent pools , allowing companies to find the perfect fit regardless of where they or the candidates might be located.

However, this shift isn’t without its challenges. The pivot to digital introduces the critical responsibility of ensuring an  exceptional digital candidate experience . In a world where first impressions are often made online, businesses must prioritize the virtual experience they provide to prospective employees, ensuring it’s smooth, intuitive, and reflective of the company’s values and culture.

As we venture further into this guide, we’ll be diving deep into the intricate dynamics of virtual interviews. We’ll explore best practices, potential pitfalls, and the overwhelming significance of ensuring a positive candidate journey. Above all, this exploration underscores the crucial role of human experience in the era of  Digital HR Strategy , emphasizing that while our tools and methods might change, the importance of human connection remains constant.

The Rise of Virtual Interviews

In today’s progressive era of  Digital HR Strategy , recruitment methodologies are rapidly evolving, moving beyond the confines of traditional practices. The typical scene of candidates nervously waiting in corporate lobbies for face-to-face interviews has been upstaged by the innovation of digital platforms.  Virtual interviews  have surged in popularity, not just supplementing, but in many cases replacing, in-person interactions. This shift signifies more than mere convenience; it represents a monumental change in how businesses approach talent acquisition and onboarding in the context of  Digital HR Transformation .

The paradigm shift towards virtual interviews hasn’t happened overnight, nor is it a result of mere whimsical trends. Several compelling reasons have contributed to making this method a mainstay in modern recruitment:

Geographical Flexibility:  In a globalized world, talent knows no boundaries. Businesses today aren’t just competing locally; they’re vying for global dominance. And with that ambition comes the necessity to harness talent from every nook and corner of the world. Virtual interviews break down geographical barriers, enabling companies to tap into global talent pools. They provide the freedom to discover, engage, and onboard individuals from diverse regions, ensuring that distance doesn’t limit excellence.

Cost-effectiveness:  The financial implications of recruitment can be significant, especially when considering international candidates. Virtual interviews significantly reduce the overheads tied to recruitment. No longer do companies have to bear the brunt of expenses associated with travel, accommodation, or venue logistics. This cost-saving advantage makes it economically viable for organizations to consider a broader range of candidates without the worry of escalating recruitment costs.

Time-saving:  The logistical challenges of organizing in-person interviews can be daunting. From booking venues to ensuring all participants are available at the same time, there’s a lot that can go awry. Virtual interviews, on the other hand, are a breath of fresh air in this context. Interviewers can seamlessly schedule back-to-back interviews without the need to account for transition times or room availability. This efficiency not only streamlines the recruitment process but also ensures that interviewers and candidates can engage in meaningful interactions without unnecessary delays or interruptions.

In the grander scheme of  Digital Talent Acquisition and Onboarding , the rise of virtual interviews is a testament to how technology is reshaping the HR landscape. Businesses that adapt to these changes, understanding the nuances and potential of virtual interviewing, are poised to thrive in this new age of recruitment.

Best Practices for Conducting Virtual Interviews

In the age of  Digital HR Transformation , the processes and strategies surrounding talent acquisition and onboarding have undergone monumental shifts. One such significant change is the widespread adoption of virtual interviews. While they offer numerous benefits like global reach and cost-effectiveness, conducting them effectively requires a unique skill set. Adhering to best practices is not just recommended, it’s essential to ensure that the integrity and effectiveness of the interview process remain uncompromised.

Test Your Technology:  The foundation of a successful virtual interview lies in the seamless operation of the technology that powers it. Prior to any interview, allocate some time to test all technological aspects involved. This includes ensuring a stable internet connection, checking the functionality of software or platforms being used, and verifying that all hardware components like cameras and microphones are in optimal working condition. This preemptive measure can prevent technical glitches that could otherwise disrupt the flow of the interview.

Maintain Professionalism:  The digital nature of the interview doesn’t diminish its significance. Just as in a traditional face-to-face interview, maintaining a professional demeanor is crucial. This includes dressing appropriately for the role and the company. Moreover, the environment in which the interview takes place should be conducive to a professional interaction. Ensure your background is clutter-free and free from distractions, creating a setting that conveys seriousness and commitment to the process.

Engage Actively:  One of the challenges of virtual interviews is the absence of physical cues that often guide in-person interactions. Therefore, being overtly active and engaged becomes even more vital. Simple gestures like nodding in agreement, maintaining steady eye contact, and offering verbal affirmations can make a world of difference. These actions reassure the candidate that they have your full attention and that their responses are being valued and considered.

Provide Clear Instructions:  A virtual interview might be a routine for the interviewer, but it could be a new experience for the candidate. To ensure that the process is smooth for all parties involved, it’s imperative to provide candidates with explicit instructions. This might encompass details about the interview platform, any specific tools they might need to download, the expected duration of the interview, and any materials they need to have on hand. A well-informed candidate is more likely to be at ease and perform to their best potential.

Record with Permission:  In the digital age, recording interviews for later evaluation can be a valuable tool. It allows interviewers to revisit specific segments of the conversation, ensuring a comprehensive assessment. However, it’s essential to respect the candidate’s privacy. Before hitting the record button, always seek the candidate’s explicit permission. Inform them of the purpose of the recording and ensure they’re comfortable with it. This not only fosters trust but also aligns with ethical recruitment practices in the era of  Digital HR Strategy .

Ensuring a Positive Digital Candidate Experience

In the realm of  Digital HR Transformation  and the evolving dynamics of talent acquisition, the  candidate experience has emerged as a focal point. As companies pivot towards leveraging digital platforms for recruitment and onboarding, ensuring a seamless and memorable candidate experience becomes imperative. After all, a candidate’s journey with an organization isn’t just confined to the interview—it encompasses every single interaction they have with your brand in the digital realm.

Smooth Application Process:  The first impression a candidate forms of your organization often starts with the application process. If they’re met with a convoluted or outdated system, it might deter them from pursuing the opportunity further. Therefore, ensuring that job portals are user-friendly is essential. In today’s age, where a significant portion of job seekers use mobile devices for their search, having a mobile-optimized platform is no longer optional—it’s a necessity. An intuitive, streamlined application process not only facilitates higher application rates but also sets a positive tone for the candidate’s journey ahead.

Clear Communication:  Keeping candidates in the dark is a surefire way to diminish their experience. Regular, transparent communication is the cornerstone of a positive candidate experience. Whether it’s acknowledging the receipt of their application, updating them about the next stages, or providing feedback post-interview, timely communication is vital. Candidates should always be aware of where they stand, what to expect next, and potential timelines. Such clarity reduces anxiety and showcases the organization’s respect for the candidate.

Respect their Time:  Time is a valuable asset, and respecting a candidate’s time is a direct reflection of how the organization values them. Just as candidates are expected to be punctual, organizations should ensure that virtual interviews start and end on time. Delays, especially without prior intimation, can leave candidates feeling undervalued and can negatively impact their perception of the organization.

Provide Support:  The shift to digital platforms brings along its set of challenges. Candidates might, on occasion, face technical issues, be it during a virtual interview, an online test, or any other part of the digital onboarding process. Offering technical support or even a simple FAQ section can significantly enhance their experience. By ensuring that candidates have easy access to solutions and assistance, organizations convey that they care about the candidate’s experience and are invested in making their journey as seamless as possible.

Feedback Mechanisms:  Beyond the recruitment and onboarding process, integrating mechanisms for candidates to provide feedback is crucial. This not only offers insights into areas of improvement but also empowers candidates, making them feel that their voice is valued. Whether through surveys, feedback forms, or direct communication channels, gaining an understanding of the candidate’s experience, and actively working towards enhancing it, is pivotal in the age of  Digital HR Strategy .

Feedback Mechanisms and Improvement

The dynamism of  Digital HR Strategy  is deeply rooted in the ethos of continuous improvement. Just as the digital landscape evolves, so should our approaches to talent acquisition and engagement. Central to this adaptive approach is the principle of feedback, the compass guiding HR professionals in an era of ever-shifting digital paradigms.

Post-interview Surveys:  One of the most direct ways to gather insights is through post-interview surveys. After every virtual interview, it’s beneficial to reach out to candidates with a concise survey. This feedback avenue can offer insights into their overall experience, potential technical issues encountered, and areas where the recruitment process might be enhanced. It’s a small step that can yield considerable insights.

Feedback Integration:  Simply collecting feedback isn’t enough. The true value lies in analyzing these responses and weaving them into the fabric of your recruitment strategy. Regular feedback integration ensures that candidates, irrespective of their selection status, feel acknowledged and valued. When candidates realize that their feedback can bring about tangible changes, it fosters a sense of connection and trust with the organization.

Iterative Improvement:  The digital landscape is characterized by its rapid rate of change. Tools that were once considered revolutionary might now be outdated. Thus, it’s crucial for HR professionals to stay on top of these developments. By consistently reviewing and updating the tools and platforms used, organizations can ensure they’re providing a seamless, state-of-the-art experience for all candidates.

Engage Rejected Candidates:  Often, there’s an unintentional oversight in focusing predominantly on the feedback from selected candidates. However, those who weren’t chosen for a position can offer equally, if not more, valuable insights. By actively engaging with rejected candidates, organizations can uncover potential bottlenecks or challenges in their processes. Their perspective can shed light on areas of the recruitment process that might have been previously overlooked.

A Proactive Approach:  Beyond reactive measures, taking a proactive stance is also essential. This means anticipating potential challenges and seeking solutions before they escalate. Be it through mock interview sessions, beta testing new digital tools, or periodic reviews, proactive feedback mechanisms can be equally instrumental. In a world driven by  Digital HR Transformation , staying one step ahead can make all the difference in crafting an unparalleled candidate experience.

Navigating the intricacies of  Digital HR Transformation  means adapting to novel tools while maintaining an inherent human connection.  Virtual interviews , a key cog in this transformation, have dramatically reshaped how we approach talent acquisition and onboarding. Their undeniable benefits, ranging from unmatched efficiency to expansive global reach, have made them indispensable in modern recruitment strategies.

Yet, amidst this surge of digital adoption, a lingering concern emerges: the potential detachment from human-centric experiences. While technology can bridge geographical gaps and streamline processes, the essence of recruitment remains rooted in human connection. This connection is the linchpin that binds candidates to companies, fostering a sense of belonging and mutual respect.

To navigate this delicate balance, it’s essential for companies to infuse their technological advancements with genuine care and attention. Offering a positive candidate experience is no longer just a bonus; it’s a non-negotiable aspect of a successful recruitment journey. This requires listening to candidates, understanding their needs and reservations, and consistently iterating on feedback.

Ultimately, the brands that will stand tall in the future are those that prioritize a blend of technological prowess with an unwavering commitment to the candidate experience. Their success won’t just be measured by their adaptability to new tools, but by their ability to humanize the very processes they seek to optimize.

Other Digital HR Transformation Pages

• Introduction to Digital HR Transformation
• What is Digital HR Transformation
• Importance and Relevance in Today’s Business Landscape
• Evolution of HR: Traditional vs. Digital in terms of HR Transformation
• Core Technologies Driving Digital HR Transformation
• Artificial Intelligence in HR: Opportunities and Applications
• HR Automation: Streamlining Processes
• Cloud-based HR Systems: Advantages and Implementation
• Machine Learning in HR: Predictive Analysis and Decision-making
• Key Components of Digital HR Transformation
• Digital HR Strategy: Navigating the Future of Human Resources
• Digital HR Tools and Software: A Comprehensive Guide
• The Role of Data in HR: Analytics and Decision-making
• Digital Workforce and Talent Management
• Digital Employee Engagement Strategies
• Digital Employee Experience: Best Practices
• Digital Talent Acquisition and Onboarding
• Digital Recruitment Strategy: Navigating the New Age of Talent Acquisition
• Onboarding Process in the Digital Age
• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)
• Remote Onboarding Challenges and Solutions
• Mobile Recruiting
• Job Portals and Digital Platforms
• Digital Training and Development
• Digital Talent Management: Retention and Development
• Implementing Digital HR Transformation
• Future of Digital HR: Steps to a Successful Transformation
• Challenges and Considerations
• Digital HR Transformation: Best Practices and Case Studies
• Training and Skill Development for HR Professionals

What is the candidate journey and how to successfully recruit with journey maps

Recruiters know: The candidate has moved into a powerful position and has changed our game. It’s not only on the candidate to apply and perform, but also on us recruiters to convince the candidate to become part of our organization. It’s on us to leave a good impression and to provide a great candidate experience in order to stand out and compete with other organizations. 

In this article, we'll discuss:

• Journey mapping in the context of recruiting
• Questions to solve in recruiting
• How to create a recruiting journey map
• Example journey map: application experience
• Challenges of journey mapping in recruiting

What are candidate journey maps for?

Just as we look closely at how candidates present themselves and make decisions against them at certain moments; they do the same thing to us: they judge us as an employer. Both parties try to present their best sides and at the same time evaluate one another, not only during the interview, but throughout the recruitment process. For a candidate many questions can arise; is the answer to my last email long missing? Is my time being treated respectfully and my effort appreciated? How rigid are the assessment methods in place that I have to go through?

During the recruitment process the way a candidate presents themselves can leave a negative impression of them as an employee, and likewise when we present ourselves poorly, we risk giving candidates a bad impression of us as an employer. Thus, to improve outcomes for both parties, it is important to shift our focus, understand our prospective employees' situation and take their experience during our recruitment process more seriously.

We need to become aware of the critical and frustrating moments that our candidates go through, so that we are able to actively identify and improve them.

We need to look out for opportunities to motivate, excite and convince candidates that we are an interesting employer to work for so that they opt for us instead of a different organization.

Customer journey maps – applied to candidate journey mapping– help us slip into the candidate’s shoes, understand their experience from their perspectives, get to know their pain points and find solutions for improvement.

How can candidate journey mapping improve recruitment?

Every stage in the recruitment process, from raising awareness about the job opportunity through to the final job offer harbours different challenges for the recruiter, and different frustrations and expectations for the candidates. Here are some of the questions you should ask yourself when designing recruitment process in your organization.

Who are the candidates?

We often differentiate candidates between their profession, background, experience level, skill-set, cultural requirements etc. However, our work life and our outside-of-work life are increasingly becoming merged and no longer have clear boundaries. The job is not only about how we make a living, but connects with many other factors in our lives, e.g. who we are as a person, the people we hang out with and what lifestyle we want to have etc.

Thus, going beyond resumes, thinking more holistically and understanding the relationship we have with our candidates as human beings, will help us understand their needs, interests and frustrations better. Creating a journey map and developing a persona help us understand:

• What does the candidates’ current work/life situation look like?
• What are the candidates’ expectations towards the new job?  
• What do they enjoy, what frustrates them at work?
• In what work environment do they feel comfortable?
• What stakeholders and factors are involved in their decision making?

How do applicants become aware of the job offer?

When we are looking for highly skilled and experienced candidates, we often don’t find them in our application pool. These folks are usually not active job seekers but already employed, involved in other projects, or not involved in thinning out the endless amount of positions on job platforms. So how can we make them aware of our job offer?

The range of places where we can reach suitable candidates is vast, from private networks and informal recommendations, to an endless number of different social networking sites. Depending on the persona, it is crucial to choose which communication channels will be most suitable and how we can best use them to make potential candidates aware of the  job we have on offer.

Journey maps have many benefits and provide us with answer to the following questions:

• What channels and platforms do the candidates use and for what purpose are they using them?
• What do I need to be aware of when using a specific channel?
• What communication styles do candidates expect on different channels?
• How do they want to be approached?

What information are candidates looking for along the application journey?

In order to take a job opportunity into consideration, candidates need to know how they can benefit from it. The details about the job they receive, directly or indirectly will affect their decision making e.g. in the job description, on the career page, in our private messages etc.

Strict requirements or inflexible job conditions can exclude certain groups of people, for example, people who are parents, groups of people with disabilities, or those who are only able to work specific hours.

If we want candidates to take our job opportunity into consideration, we need to understand what they are looking for and what we can offer in order to meet those needs and wishes.

Candidate journey mapping helps us answer these questions:

• What’s the next step the applicants want to take and how can we support them?
• Do applicants receive all the information they need so they get a clear picture of the job and context?
• Do they get appropriate and timely feedback along the application journey?
• If we want to attract more diversity, e.g. parents, does this job allow for what they are looking for, e.g.part-time and/or flextime?

What makes candidates drop out along the application process?

A cumbersome, energy-consuming application process is harmful in many different ways.

It can be disrespectful to a candidate's time; hurt an applicant's first impression of our company; or be stressful and frustrating to complete. As a consequence it can prevent a candidate from submitting an application, or worse it could be the reason for someone withdrawing their application, as they receive an equally interesting offer from a different employer.

We need to see the hiring process as a reciprocal process between the employer and the candidate: where a good balance is found between collecting all the information we need to understand candidate's, while also providing them with enough insight about who we are and opportunities to present themselves authentically and in their preferred way.

Frustrations and questions that mapping candidate journey can solve:

• What are the moments that are frustrating for the candidates?
• How effortful or time-consuming is the process for them?
• Can they rely on the application process being clear, transparent and fair in every moment?
• Do they get to know the team and the company culture and how do they perceive it?

How do candidates decide about the job offer?

In the end, it is not so much the final job offer that affects the candidate’s decision making, but all previous stages that set the foundation beforehand.

Giving our candidates the chance to get the right information about the job opportunity during the whole process helps set the right expectations, minimizing the risk of rejection at the end of the process and ensuring the recruiter’s time and effort was not wasted.

Being transparent about what the company has to offer also helps identify a long-term fit and reduce the turnover rate in the long run.

When it comes to final decision making about candidates it is important to be aware that they might have stakeholders influencing their decision. For example, parents are strongly influenced by their family’s interests. Therefore, analyzing stakeholder relations can provide  us with relevant insights that will help us support their decision making.

Future candidate journey mapping in recruitment process can answer the following questions:

• What information does the candidate need in order to weigh their options and make a decision?
• What other people influence and are involved in the candidate’s decision making?
• How can we help them build up trust towards us as their new employer?
• How can we support them in their onboarding and foster loyalty during the recruitment process?

How to create a candidate journey map to use in recruiting?

To fill the applicant journey map with a variety of meaningful insights, we can use different types of journey mapping tools for candidate experience mapping. Let's see what information, besides the classic satisfaction score, is useful for a candidate journey map.

Dramatic arc

A dramatic arc visualizes the engagement level of a candidate at each step of their journey. It reveals when the candidates are very involved or more detached from the process. We can also use terms like involvement, motivation or excitement to describe the engagement level. During the application stage, candidates might be more engaged when being interviewed than when submitting their application. During interviews face-to-face interactions might be more engaging than digital ones.

Combined with the emotional journey, a dramatic arc helps us reveal the critical pain points of a candidate’s journey. A step that has a high engagement level but triggers negative emotions needs to get attention urgently: these are moments when candidates are likely to drop out of the process.

Channels of communication

Adding an overview of the channels that are used and touched along the journey helps us understand on what occasion candidates use which channel and how this influences the candidate experience. The ultimate goal of analyzing channels is to make the process as convenient as possible for the candidate, and taking the chance to communicate with them in methods that are both effective and enjoyable.

The way we use communication channels can negatively affect our relationship with a potential candidate, for example, when candidates are confronted with digital tools for long periods of time instead of having real conversations, their engagement level might sink and make them withdraw their application.

Or, if we find out that our candidates find emails painful because usually they only use slack and there they are highly responsive, we might consider providing communication on additional channels.

Depending on our recruitment process we can split the journey in different stages. Each stage summarizes certain steps of the candidate’s journey, as e.g. the awareness stage, consideration stage, etc. Bigger companies might have more or certainly different stages than smaller companies, as e.g. assessment centers.

These stages help us keep an overview of the candidate’s journey and also break it down into sub journeys. Within a sub journey we can then focus on the steps in more detail and elaborate on specific events within a stage, as e.g. the application stage.

Candidate journey map example: application experience

Candidate journey map template

For a free candidate journey template for recruiting efforts, sign up for free on Smaply and use the EX template that you find in-app.

Challenges when introducing candidate journey mapping

Although there is already an increased focus on the job seeker's experience in recruiting, there are still challenges that need to be overcome when introducing journey mapping.

Clustering candidates into personas

The premise of good recruiting is to continuously question our unconscious biases and make as many unprejudiced and fair decisions as possible. Enforcing stereotypes, clustering people and making decisions based on demographics is definitely not the way to go and recruiters righly have a strong voice against this. But aren’t personas just about that?

No, they are not.

Personas are boundary objects. They can help us understand what candidates we are talking to, what they feel, need, experience.

However, there are certain factors that are less relevant for us to consider and which can restrict our ability to make good insights and cause our decision making ability to be rigid.

For example, is it really relevant if a candidate is 35 or 40 years old? If they live in the same city, or abroad? If they are native english speakers or just proficient? When we want to empathize with people, we need to find the sweet spot between the similarities and differences of our candidates, between the details and the high-level view.

Following a clear approach when developing personas will help us prevent building superficial personas and when basing them on real research data it will actually help us break prejudices.

Multiple candidate personas

Depending on the vacancies we are trying to fill, and the relevant requirements of those roles, the candidates we’re working with will be pretty different. For example there will be great diversity when we look at their area of work (like marketing, development, sales, R&D), seniority level (like junior, mid-level, senior, lead), experience (like different industries, different types of products) and job environment (like travelling. remote, onsite).

The larger the recruiting team grows and the more specialized they are in different areas, the more sense it will make for them to break personas down into more detailed ones.

Thus, a larger recruitment team might develop multiple sets of personas under the category development candidates, and another set of personas for sales candidates.

For smaller teams, segmenting personas in ways that are too detailed can be challenging and in the end prevent them from working with the personas. Therefore, they rather might prefer to simplify and work with one persona for development candidates, and another persona for sales candidates.

Aligning applicant's experience and employee experience

It is not only the recruiter and the candidates that are involved in the recruiting process but also team leads, co-workers and other stakeholders. This team effort occurs during the initial CV review processes, interviews, meet-and-greets and more. Providing a great candidate experience means actively involving these stakeholders and priming them for a more candidate focused mind-set.

Getting the hiring managers aboard a journey mapping approach is essential, but can be challenging sometimes. They don’t deal with recruiting and candidates on a daily basis and recruiting new people for them means an additional task that they need to juggle amongst an already busy schedule.  

So how do we get buy-in and make the process beneficial for all parties?

A great way to tackle this is by including both the candidate and the hiring manager in mapping candidate's journey. What are their shared pain points and how can we tackle them?

Fixing the hiring manager’s pain points proves the benefits of journey mapping and improves their motivation and engagement in the recruiting process.

This is one way of many to get buy-in – in our article about embedding and scaling journey mapping in organizations we have collected more of these tips to help us get going.

Candidates use the recruitment process to evaluate the employer and to make a thoughtful decision on their next career step. There are many factors that can positively, or negatively influence a potential candidates decision making process as they navigate this process.

Thus, as recruiters, we need to take our understanding of our candidate’s experience and place it at the center of our recruitment process. By doing this we are better able to understand and optimize the candidate’s experience along the entire application process, providing a more seamless experience that will help us hire the best folks, instead of losing them towards other companies.

And now, what's next?

Now you have all the knowledge you need to improve your recruitment process.

Use Smaply to visualize the recruitment process, find pain points of your applicant or team, and innovate the hiring journey.

Creating recruiting maps with Smaply is available for free.

Melina Savvidis

Melina has a background in organization studies. She has practical experience as an employee experience manager covering the entire journey from talent acquisition to onboarding and offboarding. Ultimately, her main focus is building a positive and innovative organizational culture.

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November 5, 2020

How to create the perfect candidate journey — the 8 stages by paltron.

Learn about the stages and experiences that active job seekers go through during their job search. Optimise these stages to attract the top talent in your industry.

"Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was—and still is—the most important thing we do." 

—Marc Benioff, Founder, Chairman and co-CEO of Salesforce (49,000 employees)

Due to the skills shortage in today’s digital age, companies have a hard time finding suitable employees. With 124,000 vacancies , the IT industry in Germany is so badly affected that fewer than ten applications come in for any given position.

This skills shortage has triggered a "War for Talent," which you can only win if your company offers a persuasive application process.

To do so, you need to optimise your candidate journey and the associated candidate experiences.

What are candidate journey and candidate experiences?

The candidate journey describes the stages your candidate goes through from the beginning of the job search to getting hired (and beyond). In the different phases of this journey (customer journey phases), your candidates have different experiences. We call these experiences candidate experiences.

You may be familiar with the customer journey. The candidate journey is the same approach but for your staff. Identifying the phases of your company's candidate journey allows you to treat your candidates with as much effort and dedication as you treat your customers.

If you want to win the "War for Talent," you need to follow the following  principle: The candidates are queens and kings.

Throughout the entire customer journey, your candidate will have many interactions with your company, taking place both online and offline.

For example, your candidate could:

• View your job listing on a job portal.
• Visit the jobs page of your website.
• Read a newspaper advertisement from you.
• Visit the social media profiles of your company.
• Subscribe to your newsletter.
• Come into your business.
• Join your talent network.
• Read your reviews on Kununu or Glassdoor .
• Talk to your employees.
• Meet you for a job interview.

We call those points of interaction touchpoints. With each touchpoint, your candidate experiences your company. If those experiences are positive, your candidate will stay in the race. If they aren't, you'll lose your candidate to a competitor who provided a better experience. 

Why do the candidate journey and candidate experience matter so much?

As an employer, your company has to be attractive from the very first second. It needs to present itself effectively  in all channels a candidate might come into contact with it, be it on social media, on the phone or a job portal.

Of course, all interactions that follow are just as important. Positive experiences during the whole candidate journey lead to positive word-of-mouth about your company, influencing your employer branding, building brand equity and cementing your reputation as an employer people want to work for. For an employer, brand is everything, in particular for attracting the right talent.

The trust gained during the application process forms the foundation for the new relationship between employee and company. 

On the other end, after a negative candidate journey, 89% of newly hired employees consider changing jobs again. In fact, more than half of all IT professionals will  withdraw an application if the application process takes too long.

With a great candidate journey and positive candidate experiences, you can avoid your employees becoming part of this statistic.

What makes a great candidate journey?

Top candidates not only go through your candidate journey, but also your competitors'.

To stay ahead of the competition, your candidate journey must have the following three basic characteristics.

Appreciation

From the first touchpoint, and throughout the entire process, you have to show that you appreciate your candidates.

Don't treat them as if they were replaceable. Many companies have a "They are coming to us anyway..." approach and unconsciously put off the best applicants. In the end, these companies may fill their open positions, but not with their ideal hire.

The few companies that think about the candidate journey and candidate experience are the ones winning the real talent.

Here's what your candidate expects:

• Having only one person of contact: Your candidate doesn't want to be contacted in an impersonal way by a lot of different people. Having only one person to talk to gives a feeling of familiarity and individuality.
• Staying in touch: Stay in contact with your candidate throughout the whole candidate journey. Confirm receiving the application and thank them for it, update the candidate regularly about the current state of the application and inform them about the outcome, even if you reject them.
• Constructive feedback: Whether you are rejecting or accepting, add short feedback. What did you like? What can the candidate do better next time?
• Transparency: Your candidate wants to know how the selection process works and what you focus on. Communicate your process and hiring criteria as accurately and simply as possible.
• Humanity: Nobody likes to be treated like a consumer good. Show from the very first moment that your company cares about its employees.

Your applicant's time is valuable. If they have to fill out unnecessary forms or there are other time-consuming hurdles blocking their way, they can get frustrated and abandon the whole process.

For example, it shouldn't take longer than 60 minutes to fill out an application. Practically, this means you should shy away from letting applicants type their existing CV into your own HR tool.

When the applications reach you, don't let them pile up on your desk. Two-thirds of all candidates feel that fast processing of their documents motivates them to continue with the application process. 

Key takeaway: The entire candidate journey shouldn't take longer than six weeks.

Did you know that almost 20% of people under 30 will not apply for your position if it means filling out a lengthy e-Recruiting form? Often, these are time-poor, high-profile candidates; exactly the people you want. 

We have some tips to simplify your candidate journey:

• Social media: There are various social media platforms for business purposes with Xing and LinkedIn being by far the most popular. Allow potential candidates to apply directly via those platforms.
• 1-Click application: Applying through social media is already easy. But a 1-Click application function is even more practical. With 1-Click application, potential candidates can do as little as pressing a button on your website, and your software will automatically import their Xing and LinkedIn profiles. Candidates will then only have to write their application letter after the first selection round.
• Simple titles: Even when someone feels like they are the ideal fit, they won't apply if the job title is unclear. So keep the job title simple and understandable.
• Clear job requirements: If nobody knows what the position entails, nobody will apply. Avoid "cool" wording and meaningless buzzwords.
• Everything's online: Your own website and widely known job portals are the most important channels of recruitment these days. So make sure that your online presence is appealing and up-to-date.

The 8 stages of the candidate journey, according to PALTRON

Most articles talk about six stages in a candidate journey. We have found that important opportunities for optimisation are lost if we don't include two more stages. That is why we now present the eight stages of the candidate journey, according to PALTRON.

In the first phase, your candidates will learn about the vacancy you're trying to fill. This can happen in many different ways. For example, by finding your listing on a job portal such as LinkedIn or Indeed, through your social media channels, by reading an article about your company and then visiting your jobs page, or by following someone's recommendation.

There are an infinite number of other touchpoints that you can optimise for a positive first candidate experience.

Consideration

Often, companies don't pay enough attention to this stage. Simplicity is extremely important, especially in job listings.

In the consideration phase, candidates read through your job description and expect clear, attractive conditions and challenges.

Congratulations! The touchpoint "job listing" has fulfilled the expectations of your candidate and aroused their interest. 

The candidate now goes beyond your job listing and wants to learn more about your company. What is your mission? Can they identify with your values? What do former employees say about you?

To have a positive experience in this stage of the candidate journey, you have to know and apply the principles of employer branding. 

One example is that the best employers in the world do a great job of staying consistent across all channels. Social media, website, word-of-mouth, job description, and media appearances create a uniform, positive image of a company. This, in turn, leads to proud employees and motivated applicants.

More than half of the applicants comb through the potential employer's social media profiles before applying, looking for honest opinions. Therefore, it's very worthwhile investing in a strong employer brand.

Application

As mentioned above, we recommend that you keep this stage intimate and work through it quickly.

Put yourself in the position of your applicants and test the application process yourself. You may notice details or even entire processes that could result in a bad candidate experience. When you find them, improve them right away.

Can candidates apply by using their mobile phone, for example? According to a study by Glassdoor , 58% of candidates use their mobile phone to search for a new job. Often, they would like to apply directly. If you offer this option, tell the candidates in the job description.

And most importantly, process incoming applications as quickly as possible and always keep your candidates in the loop. This way, you won't run the risk of losing top talent to your competitors while you're doing the paperwork.

Here, we aren't talking about your selection of applicants, but the applicants' selection of potential employers. There's a great chance that you aren't the only one in the race.

In this phase, transparency is key. During the first interview, most candidates can already tell if they would ever work for your company or not.

It helps to communicate with clarity what it's like to work for your company. That includes what the work culture and team spirit are like, the challenges of the position, and the possible growth opportunities and further training for the candidate.

Encourage your counterpart in the interview to ask as many questions and express as many concerns as possible. Unresolved problems clutter the mind and negatively impact the applicant's decision.

Good news, your ideal candidate has just accepted your offer!

Show them that you are looking forward to working with them and are interested in your mutual success.

The candidate journey does not end with the hire. Your new employee expects further support and good onboarding.

About a quarter of new employees quit their position within 90 days . Onboarding is a time and cost-intensive process that can be easily optimised:

• Arrange one-on-one meetings. According to a survey by LinkedIn , 72% of employees find that one-on-one meetings are the most important aspect of the onboarding experience.
• Set expectations and goals together and early on. Uncertainty about work expectations and performance goals is a new employee's worst enemy. According to the same LinkedIn survey, understanding performance goals was the second most important aspect of the onboarding experience.
• Send relevant documents to your new employee before they come in. On the first day, leave a welcome package and a card at the workplace to show your appreciation. A phone call from management to welcome them is also appreciated.
• Group the new employee with experienced employees who can teach them all the basics while on the clock. The new employee will learn from the right people and at the same time, be able to build relationships within the team.

Optimisation

Feedback your new employee is giving you is the most important source for improving your candidate journey and candidate experiences.

Take the time to interview your new employee, listen carefully, and implement the feedback you receive as soon as possible.

After this stage, the candidate journey is over... and the employee experience begins.

Five practical tips to improve your candidate journey

The right job description.

Make sure that the job title is easy to understand, that the requirements are realistic, and that the conditions are attractive.

Here's an example of one of our own live job listings.

Use a recruitment management system

With the right recruitment management software, you can create attractive job listings, post them on hundreds of channels simultaneously, and automatically sort all applications you receive.

It makes your process easier, faster, and more effective.

Find the programme that suits you here .

Proactive and personal communication

At PALTRON, we add a contact person to each job listing. The contact person takes care of the applicants for this particular position and remains in constant contact with them.

That's how we can create and maintain transparency while showing appreciation for our candidates.

Host applicant days

If you get many applications, it's beneficial to host an application day. Candidates can meet your company and get an idea of what it is like to work for it. They can ask any questions they have and introduce themselves personally.

An application day naturally reduces the number of applications you get, when people drop out upon finding out the position isn't actually a good fit for them. Additionally, you may convince the most promising candidates to apply then and there.

Acceleration of administrative processes

Keep administrative matters as short and as simple as possible. Speed is essential, and you certainly don't want to lose your top candidates to the competition just because they were able to draft a contract faster.

To win the "War for Talent," companies have to change their way of thinking drastically. They have to approach the hiring processes from the candidate's perspective and no longer from their own.

Many are optimising their customer journey constantly, and now it's time to take new ways on the personnel side as well.

Now you know what you have to pay attention to. Analyse your company's candidate journey from the perspective of your applicants. Identify all touchpoints and find ways to improve the connected candidate experiences.

You will see a lower drop-out rate, attract truly great professionals and lay a solid foundation for collaboration with each new employee.

If you need help at any point, we'll be happy to assist you .

All the best!

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The 7 Steps to Personalize The Candidate Journey

What is a Candidate Journey?

7 steps to personalize the candidate journey, 1. ensure the process is candidate-centric, 2. ask for personal stories, 3. map your ideal candidate journey, 4. make it easy to join your talent community, 5. encourage candidates to provide feedback on the interview procedure, 6. be selective, 7. prepare an onboarding process, ready to receive your next candidate.

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The Recruitment Automation Blog

Build a better digital candidate journey every step of the way, strategic recruitment with whatsapp: a comprehensive guide for modern hiring.

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Max Armbruster

Stanley is the first conversational agent to go beyond the sourcing and screening stage and to accompany candidates through their entire journey.

From the moment you welcome candidates to your recruitment office or to your career booth, they are judging you as much as you are judging them. Is every candidate welcomed properly and consistently? You can now rely on on Stanley, your candidate digital assistant to deliver a more complete experience.

In the video below, you can experienced how to transform a walk-in candidate into a brand ambassador thanks to Stanley:

To sum things up, these are all the ways in which Stanley can help:

• Measure candidate NPS (Net Promoter Score)
• Identify underlying issues with unhappy candidates
• Make candidate satisfaction a key metrics for your recruitment team
• Turn happy candidates into ambassadors
• Capture their data via mobile and record it in your ATS
• Deliver a welcome message from your recruitment or executive team
• Brief candidates on what to expect in the recruitment process and how to be mentally prepared
• Answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) about the company, the job, or the environment
• BONUS: follow up/chase candidates who did NOT show up

When candidates first leave your office, whether they are hired or rejected for the role, they are now out there talking about you. Is your employer brand protected, or better yet, is it empowered? Are candidates leaving inspired or critical?

The quality of the experience you deliver can only be systematically improved if it is regularly measured.