Candidate experience strategy is vital, but it can be useful going over exactly how it benefits your candidate conversion rates, so that your business knows which parts of the experience to optimise. If you’re asking how to improve your candidate experience, it’s important to keep the end goal in mind - your recruiters should be looking at your pipeline from a potential employers perspective, to keep what might dissuade or annoy them crystal clear in their mind. 

If your candidate experience is poor it can cause lasting damage to your business’ image, especially in the age of social media. In this article we’ll look into precisely how improving the candidate experience can boost your candidate conversion rates, and explore some ways of going about doing exactly that. 

Candidate Experience & Candidate Conversion Rates

Candidate experience is, put simply, the view that potential employees have of your organisation, based on their interactions with it when they’re applying for a job. This doesn’t just mean from the point that they start applying, it includes their initial awareness of your business from social media or word of mouth. From there it goes through their initial application, any tests or interviews, and communication right up until the point that they’re hired. 

Your candidate conversion rate is a percentage of how many potential applicants submit an application after they’ve seen adverts for your company’s role. As you can see from this, a negative candidate experience might mean that an applicant never gets to the point of applying to your company. 

Improving your company’s online image

If candidates don’t know about your business, or they don’t know what your business has to offer, they might miss out on a role that they’re perfect for, and you might miss out on a strong candidate. Making sure that your business has a strong online presence across multiple channels will up your candidate conversion rate, as it will increase the amount of interest the average candidate has in your business. 

An inploi example of this is Butlin’s use of inploi’s Attract module to deliver highly customised marketing campaigns that were segmented across role type, location and experience level, targeting candidates across multiple channels. Not only did this deliver over 700,000 job views, it helped to increase their conversion rate.s 

Making it easier for candidates to apply

Long application forms are the bane of many a jobseeker - if yours is longer or more difficult to navigate than it needs to be, it can have a serious negative effect on your candidate conversion rates. To keep them as high as possible, you want your application process to be frictionless - that means a fast webpage that works across appliances, and forms that are no longer than they really need to be. inploi Convert features conversational ‘chatbot’ reply, so candidates can apply in a way that feels natural to them, on their personal device of choice. When Compass Group UK & Ireland changed to using a customised job search page that included chatbot apply flows, built by inploi, they saw a 33% increase in their visitor / applicant conversion rates, across the business. That’s a big difference!

Keeping candidates interested

The candidate experience doesn’t end once candidates have submitted their application - it’s still very possible for that application to be withdrawn if the applicant feels frustrated with the remaining process. For example, if their interview experience puts them off, it’s very possible they’ll decide not to go ahead with their application. 83% of candidates say that a negative interview experience can impact their interest in an organisation significantly, so make sure to leave a positive impression. 

Taking too long to get back to candidates after an interview can also cause them to pull out, as can not keep them in the loop, at any point in the process. In fact, 68% of candidates agree that how a company hires reflects how it treats its employees - if you aim to create a company culture that is caring and responsive, try to demonstrate this in how you treat your applicants. 

If you’re aiming to improve your candidate conversion rates with a best-in-class candidate experience, then you should be looking at inploi’s Convert module. We partner with FTSE100 organisations to revolutionise their candidate experience, providing bespoke design and development to enhance their brand, with continuous updates to make sure that their experience stays cutting edge. To learn more about Convert, check it out here. And for more business news and tips, keep up with inploi’s Community page, where articles are posted weekly.