Why Should You Care What Your
Job Applicants Think?

Job Applicant Feedback

Job applicants – a dime a dozen right? Not so fast. It’s time you started listening to what they have to say.

With the current skills shortage and unemployment rate sitting at 5% there is often fierce competition for highly qualified and skilled employees. With organisation professionalism being a top consideration for job applicants, it’s important that this is demonstrated right from the beginning of the recruitment process, starting with the job advert and application process. In this article we look at the importance of surveying your applicants to establish just how professional your organisation is when it comes to recruiting new employees.

1. Measure the Success (or Failure) of Your Application and Interview Processes

From the initial job application stage through to induction and onboarding, getting feedback on these processes at every stage is essential to knowing how successful they are and if any procedural changes need to be made. While New Starter or Onboarding surveys cover the recruitment and induction stages, it’s just as important to know how easy (or difficult) the job application process was for all applicants (not just the successfully placed ones) and to understand what their experience was around how interviews were arranged and carried out. An applicant survey enables you to gather this data and easily see what stages are running well – or require improvement.

2. Ensure Your Internal Checklist is Being Followed

Emailed applicant with interview details? … Check.
Interviewed candidate? … Check.
Informed candidate their interview was unsuccessful? … Oops.

Every step of the application and interview process is important for a candidate looking for their next role, and if a step is omitted it can have a negative impact on a candidate’s experience of your process, as well as how they view the professionalism of your organisation. By conducting an applicant survey you are able to see at a glance if recruitment and hiring managers are following the necessary steps to make a candidate’s experience as seamless and effective as possible.

3. Optimise Your Recruitment Marketing Budget

Companies can spend thousands, if not tens of thousands, of dollars per month on advertising, whether it’s promoting job vacancies or to brand themselves as an employer of choice. However, it can be difficult to gauge how successful these efforts are, and if not monitored it may mean money down the proverbial drain. By knowing where job applicants heard about your organisation, where they found out about your available job opportunities and understanding how useful different sources of media were for them in making a decision to go forward or not, you are better able to direct your recruitment marketing dollars into avenues that job applicants frequent and improving your recruitment marketing ROI. This is an especially useful analysis to uncover where your best people are being sourced from.

4. Gauge Potential Employees’ Perceptions of Your Organisation’s Brand and Culture

The job application and interview process gives applicants a strong idea of your organisation’s culture. It can also have an impact on how candidates see your organisation and brand; whether they will recommend your organisation to other applicants; and it can ultimately influence whether or not they accept a role with you. Getting feedback on the experience candidates – successful or not – have regarding your job application and interview process will give you a good idea of how your organisation is perceived by them, why they applied for a job with you in the first place, and build precious “word of mouth” recommendations in a competitive employment market.

When coupled with new starter / onboarding surveys, data from job applicant surveys can give you an excellent insight into the candidate experience right from the start of their job journey with your organisation. Given the high costs of getting recruitment wrong, applicant feedback surveys are an important part of refining the applicant’s recruitment experience, and ultimately assist in the quest to attract high quality employees.

Why not take a pro-active measure and get your Job Applicant Survey up and running now!

Contact PeoplePulse today on ph +61 2 9232 0172,

If you are interested in a demonstration of full featured online survey software offered by a full service provider, please request a demo.

Next Article:

10 Essential Recruitment Branding Guidelines

 

Thank you for reading: Job Applicant Feedback – why Should You Care What Your Job Applicants Think?