Feature
First impressions count, especially when it comes to attracting the talent that your organization needs to hire. So it might be worth considering what it’s like for prospective job candidates to log into your career portal intending to introduce themselves with their job applications and resumes.
Somehow this is worse than having to create a Taleo account to apply pic.twitter.com/QG8CQnzCCB
— Matt Charney (@mattcharney) August 8, 2024
Instead of a welcoming experience, many encounter one obstacle after another and questions that they don’t feel comfortable answering or that seem irrelevant.
Keep in mind, these are professionals that you, the employer, have spent time and money trying to attract. One of them may be the most valuable candidate your company needs now. Others might be workers you’ll want to recruit a few months or years from now. These folks are likely to talk about their experiences with their families, coworkers and friends. What will they say? That depends on the impression you, the employer, make now.
Are Companies Aware of the Candidate Experience?
“Candidate resentment is at an all-time high,” Kevin Grossman, vice president at ERE Media told Reworked. To be more specific, 27% of candidates said that they are no longer willing to engage with a business and a brand due to a poor candidate experience. “This is a 93% increase from 2023,” said Grossman.
Why? Here's how some workers feel when they log into company career sites:
Leeland Heins, Software engineer with extensive experience in multiple tech stacks and industries: "Workday is hands down the worst candidate user experience out there. Companies should know that it reflects poorly on them; however, I suspect that most just don't care. And that is even though they are probably losing a lot of candidates who just close the window as soon as they see it is Workday. Most companies probably have no idea how many applications get discarded. And I'd suspect that probably it is weeding out a lot more good ones than bad because people who are desperate are probably more likely to put up with it than people who know they're likely to be successful in their search soon. If companies cared about getting quality candidates and presenting a good image they'd use something else."
Lastraven587 posted on r/recuritinghell 6 months ago: "Does anyone else just ignore iCIMS and Workday applications as soon as you land on the first step? I feel like I'm in hell job hunting; I've sent out enough applications over the last 14 months to be so burnt out that I just want to crawl in a hole and die. I was simply wondering if I'm the only one that flat out ignores job postings from these two systems because you have to make a new candidate profile EVERY SINGLE TIME and it's not a good use of your time?"
Or consider this LinkedIn pile-on in response to the use of another common recruiting tool.
You get the idea. Some would-be applicants who spent time researching specific employers and reading job descriptions that hiring managers took valuable time to write were interested until they saw the name of the ATS provider. These applicants, or would-be applicants, left job portals either disenchanted or without applying.
Why? Aside from everything mentioned above, many report being tired of correcting the way their resumes get parsed. Ditto for being asked to fill in the names and addresses of their previous employers as well as the name of their supervisors. And listing the contact information for three references. Many feel that that’s asking for too much too soon.
And then there’s more personal information that they are asked to provide.
“I've been job hunting and noticed Insomniac Games career page requires your gender, gender identity, pronouns, sexual orientation, latinx (yes or no?), and ethnicity to be considered. Is this going too far?
“Now when I was doing some company trainings and activities, ALL of them had this survey there as if they wanted to brag in some corporate race like "Yo, look how many trans people we have in our company! We are better and more inclusive!!!"
Although answering these questions is optional, some workers don’t perceive it that way. Do employers know how would-be applicants feel?
Related Article: Talent Experience Is Broken and the Technology Isn't Helping
Where the Candidate Experience Is Failing
While Grossman doesn’t have any statistics on sentiment during this part of the application process, “there’s definitely frustration,” he said. Jobvite’s 2024 Employ Job Seeker Nation Report lists six main points of irritation:
- Having to input the same information from the resume into the application: 65%
- Length of time required for each application: 56%
- Not hearing back from the employer at all: 52%
- Having to register to apply: 46%
- Receiving generic automated confirmation email: 42%
- Having to join the talent network to apply: 39%
There’s also no shortage of complaints on social media or in the mainstream press. Adding to the chaos are the new AI services that will apply for jobs on behalf of the jobseeker for a fee.
This, of course, leads to an influx of applicants for recruiters who, with all of the layoffs in human resources departments, are already overworked and burnt out. What might help jobseekers and recruiters alike?
Related Article: 6-Month Recruiting Processes Shouldn't Be the Norm
Tips to Improve the Recruiting Process
Job applications that gather no more information than necessary for an initial evaluation could represent a win for candidates because applications might become less tedious. Recruiters and their employers would benefit because they would be responsible for less data (aka, data minimization) and have less information to review. Not only that, but employers could potentially pose knockout questions at the time of application and notify job seekers that they are no longer being considered earlier in the process. Further information could be gathered as candidates move through the application process.
As an example, Contra, a company that brands itself as “the operating system for your flexible workforce," adopted an approach to screen out AI-generated job applications. In a tactic mentioned in the Wall Street Journal article ‘You’re Fighting AI With AI’: Bots Are Breaking the Hiring Process," Contra included a prompt that asked applicants about the pros and cons of software-development methodologies. However, they added a twist that only human applicants would catch. David Roeske, Contra’s vice president of finance, explained that the prompt concluded with, “If you’re reading this, awesome — do not answer this question.” This simple yet effective strategy ensures that only genuine applicants move forward in the process.
Conference
Sep
16
HR Tech Conference Las Vegas 2025
Register
Conference
Oct
27
Gartner HR Symposium/Xpo Orlando 2025
Register
While many companies make initial strides in improving the job candidate experience, these efforts frequently lack long-term sustainability. As Grossman said, temporary fixes are common but rarely address the root causes of candidate dissatisfaction. For organizations to truly benefit from a refined recruitment process, a consistent and genuine commitment to enhancing the candidate experience is essential. This involves not only adopting end-user-friendly technologies that mirror an ecommerce experience, but also continuously refining practices based on candidate feedback.
Your goal? Make applying for a job a breeze, not a chore.
