Candidate Experience

Candidate experience refers to how job seekers perceive and feel about an organization’s hiring process. It is often quantified through candidate satisfaction surveys or Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the Offer Acceptance Rate.

The candidate satisfaction involves asking rejected candidates if they’d reapply or recommend the employer.

While the offer acceptance rate is the percentage of offers extended that candidates accept. An offer-to-acceptance ratio is a concrete metric. For instance, a 90% acceptance rate means 9 out of 10 offers result in a hire, whereas 70% would indicate many declinations.

Other indicators of candidate experience include application drop-off rates (how many start applying vs finish), time between communications, and anecdotal feedback. Essentially, this metric family captures how effectively and respectfully a company engages candidates, from first contact to offer (or rejection).

Impact of Positive Candidate Experience

A positive candidate experience has both immediate and long-term business benefits. Immediately, better experience yields higher offer acceptance. Research shows that top candidates often have choices, and they’ll go where they felt most valued and excited.

A smooth, engaging process can be the difference in convincing a talented hire to join your team over a competitor’s. Each declined offer is a lost investment of recruiting time (and potentially leaves a critical role unfilled longer).

So optimizing for candidate experience directly improves hiring success rate and reduces time to hire/cost per hire. Long-term, every candidate is a potential customer or brand ambassador (or detractor).

A famous Virgin Media study showed that a poor candidate experience cost the company millions in lost subscriptions. This happened when rejected candidates who had bad experiences turned away from the brand. Conversely, treating candidates well – even if they don’t get the job – can enhance your employer brand and consumer brand.

Especially for companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, which get massive applicant volumes. The way those applicants are treated at scale can affect public perception.

Candidate experience is tightly linked to employer reputation. In the age of Glassdoor and social media, news of a frustrating interview or lack of follow-up can spread quickly. On the flip side, a reputation for respectful and transparent hiring (even if tough) attracts more and better applicants.

When candidate experience is optimized, companies see higher acceptance rates, larger talent pipelines, and stronger employer brands.

For example, after Apple implemented its feedback initiative and other experience improvements, they saw an uptick in offer accepts. Also, in star candidates re-applying after initially losing out, because they felt valued and got useful feedback (according to Apple’s HR testimonials).

Employer of Choice with Experience

Amazon and Google remain employer-of-choice destinations largely because even though their interviews are tough, candidates feel if they get in it’s a meritocratic process – and along the way, they are handled professionally.

Google’s candidate surveys have historically shown very high satisfaction rates (in the 90th percentile) for those who received offers. And surprisingly it is reasonable for those rejected, which is a sign of a respectful process.

On the flip side, companies that neglect candidate experience pay the price. Those companies lose good candidates and can earn a negative reputation.

If a candidate has a poor experience with a company, they might share it on LinkedIn or Glassdoor, dissuading others. Thus, these companies treat candidates almost like customers. Indeed, candidate experience is now seen as part of the overall talent brand.

It’s telling that 87% of employers in one survey said improving candidate experience is a top priority.