Metrics that Matter: Quality part 2

This is the second part of our series reviewing Talent Metrics that Matter.  In our first post we focused on Hiring Manager satisfaction of their experience.  In our second post we are going to look at an often neglected area of Quality of Candidate Experience.

As we stated in our previous post we are looking to have the candidates share their voice of their experience as they have gone through your hiring process.  This is called Voice of the Customer (VOC).  Historically this measurement has been somewhat controversial with organizations but our advice is this is an area that needs to be measured, and we’ll explain the negative impacts it can have to your brand.

In our previous post Talent Metrics that Matter: Quality we focused in more detail on the approach an organization can take to measure quality, so we won’t rehash those here other than to sum it up with 1) Begin to measure 2) Determine what to measure 3) Chose the frequency of measurement 4) Chose the system or tool to enable the program.

We have been working with organizations for some time on measuring the quality of candidate experience.  The reason this measurement is so important is the impact that it can have on your brand in the age of highly networked and socially aware candidates.  If a candidate has a negative experience during their interview process with your company, they are likely to share that experience with others (whether it be positive or negative).  We often have executive search candidates that refuse to be submitted or interview for a role at certain companies based on their reputation, citing poor experiences, a timeline that took far too long, or poor interactions with interviewers.  Your organization may already have some poor experiences cited, look yourself up on Glassdoor for example as a quick checkpoint.

In some of our recent polls we’ve captured three areas of candidate satisfaction asking them to 1) Rate their overall experience 2) Rate their likelihood of sharing dissatisfaction 3) Areas of improvement. Below are two of the recent measures results for experience rating and likelihood of sharing dissatisfaction:

The somewhat good news is 61% of candidates rate their recent interview experiences as positive, with only 28% reflecting a negative experience.  However, when we asked candidates how likely they were to share their dissatisfaction with their experience, 77% of them said they would.  When we probed deeper we found that the candidates will leverage sites like Glassdoor to share more socially, but more alarming is what they will say to other candidates in the market.  If you are not measuring this data to date then you don’t really have a way to address this.

Finally we asked candidates to give us recommendations for improvement in their experiences.  Below are the top 3 suggestions in order of importance:

1. Keep me more informed:  this probably won’t surprise some of you but corporate HR and talent management functions are known for not being responsive or informative.  May respondents cited never getting confirmation of resume receipt, and very little communication from recruiters throughout the process.
2. Provide more information about the role:  Respondents cited poorly crafted job descriptions, uniformed interviewers, or “cagey” responses when questions were asked about why the position was opened in the first place.
3. Make the process shorter:  Even as we strive for leaner processes candidates are still frustrated.  One suggestion from a candidate was to be very clear at the beginning of the process what the timeline may look like.  If it’s going to take two months then state that.

We hope this bit of data has been helpful, and we’ll continue to research and explore this topic.  If you’d like to learn more about this research and have us help you craft your own approach to Quality measurement then Contact Us!