RWL037 Enhance Hiring Outcomes with Five Proven Strategies for Candidate Experience

Improving Candidate Experience in Hiring

Speaker 1

0:00

Hi, it's Alex at Remote Work Life here. I hope you're well. And for those who don't know, remote Work Life is a growing community and podcast where tech and digital marketing professionals from around the world with a shared interest in remote work come to learn how to grow a remote career or business from those who know the world of remote work best. I'm your host, alex Wilson-Campbell, and I'll share with you interviews from SaaS and product and service CEOs, leaders and entrepreneurs and talk to you about the benefits of remote work. And today I want to talk to you about something that really annoyed me when I first heard about it. It's not the first time I'd heard about this particular thing, but it really annoyed me, and at that particular point, which is probably about two weeks ago now, I was very tempted to immediately produce a podcast about that particular thing, and if I'd done that, it probably would have turned into a rant podcast, and I'm not the kind of person who likes to rant. I prefer a more measured and sort of yeah, a more, I guess, a more civilized approach at expressing my frustration. So I decided to wait a little while, I made some notes and I today want to share this thing with you and that thing is. It's related to job seekers actually, because I don't know if you know, but I coach, I coach job seekers. I coach people in general in terms of finding their next steps in their career, and I was speaking to somebody who was, in fact, at the time, looking for a new role, and one of the pieces of advice that I give them is that they really need to network, and that network involves direct contact with any prospective employer, and that direct contact in this instance was a phone call to that employer, because one of the things is that, well, one of the things I recommend is that you pick up the phone and speak to potential employers, and that can sometimes be a cold call into an employer. You know at least some form of contact in that way. And this person, she was really making a massive effort in terms of she was employed at the time, but she was making an effort to really get to know potential employers with a view to actually applying for roles or having some sort of speculative application, and I think it's in fact, before I go in any further, I recommend that if you are, if you're hiring either now or in the future, I recommend that you listen to this or if if you are in fact somebody who is looking for a new role, this will help you to identify those businesses that are, I guess they've got their systems and got their sort of processes in order, and it can give you some sort of an inkling as to what you may be getting yourself into. So there's two types of people who should listen to this.

Speaker 1

3:05

So she'd been ringing around various potential employers to really promote herself and introduce herself, in some cases just to find out if certain roles were still available, having seen them posted on various websites. And in this instance she had seen a role on a particular website that appeared to be live, and usually the indication when you see a role on a website it is that it is live. So she phoned up and she didn't get a great response. So she came back to me and she reported back in terms of the response that she got, what she was happy with, what she wasn't so happy with. So out of that, I've just really identified, I guess, five things that, from her experience that I believe this particular employer, or employers in general, really needs to do to get the most out of their hiring process and, by the way I've been hiring now for the last decade or so. I've hired as part of internal teams. I've also hired in the world of recruitment, having been a recruitment consultant myself for a number of years. So all this information I'm about to share with you is based on things that I've done myself and that have worked myself and my obviously other colleagues within the world of recruitment and hiring have done as well. So, yeah, I was a bit, yeah, I really felt for this particular person because I knew she'd been really putting a lot of effort into finding her next role. But, in any case, let's just talk about these five things that this particular employer didn't do or could have done better to make her experience feel better.

Speaker 1

4:55

Because, just bear in mind, right is is, uh, is looking for a role and takes the time to pick up the phone and make will make direct contact in some way. That usually means that they have a real sort of obviously a real interest in that particular business or in a particular business. It means they're making a real effort usually to to really get to know that business. So I think that should be reciprocated by whoever answers that phone, or whichever business is in question and answers the phone or whoever answers the phone. So just five things just to be wary of if you're hiring and you've put a number of roles out there. So the first thing is only advertise jobs that are live. So again, in this particular instance, she rang up this business and phoned up to inquire about the job. The person who answered the phone didn't actually know whether the job was still a lot still live or or not.

Speaker 1

6:01

Now again, I mean, this is gonna I'm gonna speak a bit more about this a bit later on but whoever's, if you're hiring, whether you're in a big business or a small business, you have, you should have some sort of response management mechanism. You should have some sort of mechanism to to sort of make sure that the jobs that are live are, you know, are on the website, or the jobs that are not live are taken off. I know sometimes it can take a little while, especially if you're in a smaller team, to take that job off, but at least, at the very least, the person answering the phone should know if that job is live or not, because that person who is ringing you is taking time out of their schedule to find out it's probably you never know that particular person may not be in gainful employment, may be ringing you at their own expense. So the last thing you want, or the last thing that person wants, is to to waste their time, waste their money um, well, not necessarily waste their time, waste their money Well, not necessarily waste their time. But I suppose what they want is to know whether or not a particular role is still open. I don't want to sort of dwell on this one too much, but you should know, or at least only advertise, jobs that are live.

Speaker 1

7:13

So the second thing is and it kind of links to that what I've just mentioned is brief your team. You know, brief your team because that particular person who answered the phone didn't actually know the dates. You know if the job one, if the job was still alive or not, or if any other jobs were still alive or not, or when the closing date was, or when they stopped receiving CVs, et cetera, et cetera. So brief your team, because if you brief your team, then at least if you have incoming calls, you can provide that particular person who rings you with as much information as they need that particular time. It may not be that person's responsibility to deal with the recruitment process but at the very least they can give a good experience to whoever it is who calls in, and that's really important. It leads me on to my next point, which is treat whoever calls in like a valued customer, because you never know, right? Um? So sometimes the people who apply for jobs are people who really respect your brand, who really look up to your brand. So can you only imagine, right, if you, if somebody rings in and, uh, they get a bad experience, bad customer experience, then how that might reflect on your brand. It's very important that you protect your brand. It's very important that you show your brand in the best light by giving that person who rings in a good customer experience.

Speaker 1

8:51

You know, say thank you for calling in. I mean again by all reports, the person I'm mentoring. She said to me that I didn't even get a thank you for calling in. I got no sort of empathy from the person who answered the phone at all. There was no, you know, there was no real connection. I just felt, really, she said she felt let down in many ways. She felt down after the phone call and that's the last thing you want. You want, you know, you really want to respect somebody who calls in to your business to find out about working for you. So your brand is at stake here. If you kind of make that kind of mistake and I know this is probably an extreme example, but this can happen and I've seen it happen a lot of times so treat that person like a customer, you know.

Speaker 1

9:40

Like I said, make them feel welcome. That's another point I want to make. Make them feel as though they're welcome, because, again, it's not just about your brand, but obviously connected to your brand are your values. Your values are at stake. So you've got to, if you say that you're this, that and the other, then in your value statement on your website, then you've got to show that in your interactions with people, not just the people that are within the business, but the people that ring in, the people that make inquiries about the business, whether that be by email or telephone. So make that person, make that person ringing in about a job or whatever it may be, feel like they are welcome, you know, so that they can really understand what you're all about, so they can really get a picture of what it may well be like to work within that particular business.

Speaker 1

10:30

I mean again, from listening to the feedback from this lady that I am mentoring at the moment. It doesn't. She sounds as though now, as though she doesn't, she's kind of having second thoughts about, about that business and I said to her don't, you know, don't, don't think like that, maybe just that they're having a bad, that person may have been having a bad day. Don't, don't sort of just write it off from that particular interaction. I think you have to dig a bit deeper. You know, if you get invited for an interview, for example, or if you, you know if you see another role or or because what she was told to do, she was told to, to, to send an email. In fact, this, this kind of annoyed me a little bit more as well. She was told to send an email to a, just a generic email address. I think it was just a, a welcome at whatever it was, or jobs at whatever. So she was. She wasn't really treated that well. So I can kind of understand her why she may be disillusioned with that particular experience. But I said, don't write it off just yet. You know, keep an open mind.

Speaker 1

11:40

As I said, that person might have been a poorly trained person etc. It might be, you know. So make that person. Make your conversations with people who ring in, especially about working with you. Make them feel welcome and I think I've talked about making them feel welcome. I've talked about treating them like a customer. You know, to protect you. You know it's about all about your brand only advertise a live job, brief your team that's so important and have some sort of response management mechanism in place that the team can follow. Even, like I said, even if it's not somebody you know who, who deals with that particular role or is who's in charge of dealing with recruitment, the team should know what is going on and be able to, you know, highlight the person who that particular inquiry should be directed to. So the next one is take a phone number for that person to you know. So if you briefed your team, you can brief them in as much or as little detail as you like. Once you've briefed your team, the very least you should get them to do is take a phone number from whoever it is that calls in to enquire about that job, because you never know who you're letting down. It could be some of the best.

Speaker 1

13:03

Some of the best job seekers are passive job seekers. I know this kind of like, might be kind of, but you're saying, you might be saying, alex, well, she's not passive because she's actually ringing in, but she was not in need of a job. She was actually just making an inquiry about the job. She didn't need to move, she was gainfully employed, she was on a decent salary, she didn't need to move, nothing like that. She was just inquiring because she was really interested in the company, really interested in the job. So that makes her in many ways a passive job seeker because she didn't need, she didn't need any role. You know, obviously she's actively, she's that she's taking an active stance in that particular situation, um, to to actually look. But it may be that passive you know ultra passive job seekers I suppose you could say are going to ring in to to find out about a particular job.

Inclusive Approach to Hiring Team Collaboration

Speaker 1

14:06

If you don't take a phone number, you may well never hear back from that particular person again or be able to contact them ever again. And yeah that that. I think that probably is the thing that annoyed me the most is that whoever answered that phone couldn't be bothered to take a phone number, couldn't be bothered to take that person, didn't find out that her, her name, you know to just to find out. Even if take her first name and number and say you know, somebody will call you back. Even if you call back to say, I don't know, you know, sorry about that, this job is not live. You know, please send in your details and we'll keep you ready. Just something like that, just something as simplistic as that. Pass on the phone number to somebody you know, take a number that can be passed on to somebody who is dealing with that particular job, but that's it. I mean, I hope this hasn't turned hasn't turned into a rant, but, like I said, this is something that's really um, is really valuable.

Speaker 1

15:07

If you, as I said, if you're hiring either now or in the future, you need to get everybody, everybody on board, doesn't matter what level of responsibility that they have in terms of um hiring somebody. It could be that, like I said, just answer the phone and taking inquiries. You know, you should have some sort of, like I said, some sort of mechanism to deal with those inquiries in a way that doesn't sort of rub people's nose up the wrong way, if you see what I mean. So that's it from me for now. I'd say, you know, just if you are, I guess, in the process of hiring, review your processes, make sure everybody's briefed, make sure everybody knows what's happening, and even get your team involved in the process.

Speaker 1

15:56

There may be, you know, members of your team who know people who might be able to fulfill a role that you're advertising either now or in the future. So, yeah, have the team on board, get everybody involved in it. Like I said, there's different levels of involvement, but they should at least be on the same page as you as the manager of that particular team. So that's it from me for now. I wish you all the best. Please do connect with me on LinkedIn, connect with me on Facebook via the Remote Work Life Accelerator group and ask me any questions that you need to ask, and I will speak to you again soon.