For many candidates, the time between hitting 'send' on an application and being hired can feel like entering a black hole. They can spend days working on their CV and cover letter, only to experience weeks of hearing nothing until they receive an impersonal email notifying them the position has been filled. It's demoralising for candidates, but it's an all-too-common problem when your hiring team is stretched to the max.
When you have dozens or even hundreds of applicants, it can seem tough to give a personal touch to each candidate as it takes time and effort to curate an excellent experience for every person. You need to examine your pipeline and identify points where you can delight, whether that be a simple application process, a or reminders to stay in touch at key points.
Luckily there are some excellent candidate experience tools that can assist you at many points along your hiring process. Here are our top 6:
1. Ideal: Resume screening
Getting proper feedback back to every applicant at CV review stage is a challenge for most. The problem when you’re recruiting for a high-volume post is sifting through all the applications. Of course your ATS will scan for keywords to draw out suitable applicants, but sometimes this can miss top talent because they didn’t use the right language on their CV.
Resume screening tool rates all candidates from A-D in real time, so you know which candidates to focus on engaging but you don’t miss out on great people who may not pass your traditional ATS filters. Ideal can also scour your current talent pool to rediscover previous applicants who could be great candidates for your latest position.
As ideal screens 100% of applications, candidates who make your shortlist can be contacted within days rather than weeks giving both your candidates and recruiters a smooth experience.
2. Paradox Olivia - Assistive intelligence
One of the top reasons for a poor candidate experience is lack of communication or communication overload. But when you have so many candidates to keep on top of, it can be hard to keep track. Olivia is an AI assistant that claims to create the most streamlined hiring process possible, taking the strain off your hiring team through managing the routine interactions with candidates so you can focus on interviewing the people who fit your ideal profile.
Using a clever chatbot, Olivia creates personal engagement at scale via SMS. Olivia screens your candidates and schedules face-to-face interviews only with those who meet your requirements. She can also answer common questions about the role, the interview process and your company, creating a smooth and responsive candidate experience. The proof: 75% of candidates say thank you after interacting with Olivia.
3. Zinc: Automated reference and background checks
Zinc (that’s us!) is an automated referencing and background screening tool with a difference. Rather than focusing on simply verifying the jobs and skills on your candidates’ CVs, Zinc offers that elicit qualitative information about your candidates’ values, motivation, and optimum work environments. This gives you valuable insights on culture-fit, incentives and work style so you can choose candidates who will flourish in your company and even personalise their onboarding.
The reference checks are transparent and fair. Once the check is completed, the candidate is ‘gifted’ with their references in their own shareable profile. For the first time, they own and control their reference data which is reusable throughout their career. Turn reference and background checks into a point of delight in your candidate journey, helping your employer brand by showing you care.
While reference checks are the problem Zinc was designed to solve, we also offer 12 different background checks in 190 countries, including, criminal record checks, education checks and credit checks. All of these background checks can be combined into one package and requested at the click of a button. With customisable checks and flexible price packages, Zinc fits around your hiring needs. It’s never been easier to get in-depth reference checks, directly to your inbox.
4. Slack: Job-focused communication
It’s likely you already use, or have used, Slack to interact with your co-workers, but you may not know about this integration that will make your life easier. You can now integrate Slack with some top ATS's such as and create channels for specific jobs.
If you already use this tool at work, this integration is a no-brainer. Communication around different jobs are organised and streamlined for your hiring teams making it easier to share direct links to candidate profiles. This means less effort for you to stay on top of your hiring decisions and clear updates and decisions to the candidates. Win-win.
5. Survale: Metrics for candidate experience
To see where you can optimise your candidate experience, you need metrics. This is where Survale really shines. It can be customised to collect feedback from candidates and hiring managers at key points along your candidate’s journey as you progress them in your ATS. This means you can identify weak spots and work out how to make improvements.
Feedback can also be collected to inform your employer brand. Find out what appeals to candidates and what isn’t quite working to refine your brand story and perfect your communications from the job advert to the interview.
Survale isn’t limited to hiring, it has features for employee feedback so you can also use it to enhance employee engagement.
6. Hibob: Onboarding platform
The candidate experience doesn’t end once an offer has been accepted which is why we’ve included an onboarding platform in our list. Many people view the onboarding process as part of the candidate experience, lasting up to one year after the candidate has started their new role so it’s important to get this stage right.
Good onboarding can lead to better job performance and higher rates of retention, but it’s a stage that all too many companies let slide. Too many candidates have found on their first day that they didn’t have the right equipment (if any!) or their line manager wasn’t prepared for them to start. The last thing you want is for a new hire to feel like an inconvenience.
With an onboarding platform like Hibob, you can streamline all the admin and tasks for new joiners and do away with forms and long, confusing email chains. You can also customise workflows so that all departments involved can collaborate, ensuring your new team members have a smooth experience and get to know the company from day one.
To improve your candidate experience, check out out Hibob.
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Your candidate experience gives your candidates an insight into how you treat your staff. A good candidate experience will ensure you close the best talent and will unlock things like increased referral rates and NPS scores. Even if you don’t end up hiring someone, giving them a positive experience is beneficial as their impression of your company helps build your employer brand. Candidates talk to other job-seekers, so you want to ensure they only have good things to say about you.
With all these tools at your disposal, it’s easy to be organised and proactive in giving your candidates an excellent experience. You may have noticed that a good candidate experience often revolves around good communication and transparency and adding in human touches all along the hiring pipeline. So be sure to keep these values in mind when designing your process. Try out some of these tools to optimise your hiring, improve your employer brand and attract top talent.
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