“Every time I find a superstar candidate, they drop out right before the final interview.”
“My boss wants me to use AI, but I don’t know where to start.”
“I have 849 CVs to go through for one junior hire and I just don’t have the time.”
Sound familiar?
When you’re strapped for time and just trying to keep up, the last thing on your might is how to improve candidate experience.
At Zinc, we often hear from companies like Darlington Building Society and Jensten that it’s the first thing they tackle once they’ve found enough time savings (often using Zinc).
But what if a better candidate experience can actually save you time?
In our brand-new report, we asked 1,000 HR and TA pros how they’re currently feeling about the state of hiring heading into 2026. They had a lot of thoughts — and ideas about how to make the process better, more human, and faster.
Read the full report here, or keep scrolling for the highlights.
First things first: What is candidate experience, and why does it matter?
Candidate experience covers a lot of things: how easy it is to submit an application, how candidates feel in interviews, time to hire, and more. It helps you build a solid employer brand and makes sure that new employees are set up for success from day one — in fact, from before day one.
We know you know why a great candidate experience is important, but let’s recap:
More acceptances
According to a survey from SHL, nearly half (42%) of UK candidates have said no to an offer because they had a poor experience during the hiring process. On the other hand, a great candidate experience means that they’re far more likely to accept yours over a competitor.
Faster time to hire
There are a lot of reasons candidates drop out of the hiring process. But whether it’s a drawn-out interview process or a clunky application software, a poor candidate experience increases your time to fill and shrinks your talent pool.
Better employer brand
Employer branding lasts so much longer than market trends. Brand is long-lasting, and a bad experience now can have repercussions years down the line. Candidates who feel respected and valued during your process are more likely to refer colleagues, reapply, and strengthen your talent pool.
Boosted bottom line
The effects of a poor experience aren’t just limited to your talent pipeline — they’re business critical.
One famous example? Virgin Media took a good look at their hiring process and found that disappointed job applicants who were also customers cost the brand an estimated £4.4 million in lost revenue annually.
How to improve candidate experience, starting today
To save time, you’ve got to invest time. Which can feel like a paradox when you’re drowning in an overflowing inbox. So how do you carve out the space in your calendar without letting any of your other projects fall to the wayside?
1. Automate the right things, for the right reasons
“Automation” is one of the biggest buzzwords in TA right now. And all the LinkedIn chatter might just be on to something.
No automation is ever going to replace a good talent pro with solid instincts, but it can make your job easier. How? By doing everything you don’t want to do.
When we were putting together our report (read it here), we reached out to Charlotte Egan at John Lewis Partners, who gave us some great advice:
“Really cross-examine and continue to revisit those parts of the process that have the highest amount of repeated tasks. Each click you save by continuing to chip away at process improvement over time all adds up to a quicker time to hire. It’s not always about the big projects – there are lots of hidden time-saving gems.”
But candidates don’t want to feel like they’re just being pulled through the process by a robot. Here are some quick wins for saving time with automation and making your process more personalised:
- Warm up your rejection emails: Missing names, mismatched subject lines, bad timing, and messy templates make candidates feel like an afterthought. QA your early-stage templates, and personalise as much as possible when candidates get towards the end of the process.
- Give meaningful updates: Basic check ins are easy to automate, but be sure to include estimated timelines and next steps. Even just a “we’ve got your application, expect a response next week” reassures candidates more than boring boilerplate.
- Blend automation with human review: AI can feel like a lifesaver when you’re staring down hundreds of applications for one role. But use screening to prioritise CVs, not reject them. Keep a human in the loop for promising outliers, ensuring automation doesn’t close any doors too early.
- Timing is everything: Make sure your systems aren’t automatically sending out candidate surveys before candidates get a final decision. For extra credibility, pair them with a personalised note to show you value their feedback.
- Sync your systems: Make a list of all the automated messages you send to candidates and when. Are there places where they overlap? Candidates should never receive conflicting or duplicate messages, so stay aligned to build credibility.
It’s not about re-inventing the wheel. It’s about making process improvements that help you do what you do best — connect with candidates.
2. Think thoughtfully about compensation
There’s nothing worse than having to go back and forth with the finance team to see if you can stretch the hiring just a little further for that one superstar candidate. Except when they say no, and you have to start the whole process over again.
51% of TA folks told us they’d put a higher salary on their job ads to encourage more applications. While that might seem like a great idea in theory, it often just leads to wasted time and frustrated candidates.
Salary transparency isn’t required by law in the UK, but almost 70% of UK job postings included salary information in 2025. Studies have shown that including pay information closes 18% of the gender pay gap and leads to more applications from qualified candidates (which, after all, is the goal).
One report even found that personalised benefits and total rewards frameworks are becoming more important to candidates, especially as they look beyond salary towards perks like flexible working, healthcare benefits, parental leave, and more.
It’s worth thinking about your total compensation approach to help you save time in negotiation and avoid hiring heartbreak. If you’re not convinced, here’s what to consider:
- A good total compensation approach sets you apart from your competitors, especially if you offer a benefit that isn’t widely available in your sector
- As the market changes and more regulation around pay transparency comes into effect in the EU, candidates will start to expect good benefits and be turned off if they’re missing
- They help build a work culture that gets candidates excited to join your company
- It’s good for employee retention — which means you have to hire less
- Rising cost of living means that benefits take on a greater value to candidates
- They help you meet the needs of diverse employee groups, strengthening your business as a whole
- Benefits that support employee wellbeing can help manage risk and burnout
- Salary sacrifice schemes can increase the take-home value of benefits for employees
If all else fails? Hire quickly. The more you can speed up your time to hire, the more you can compete in a crowded candidate market for the most qualified employees. Just make sure your candidate experience doesn’t suffer.
Which leads us to…
3. Hire faster
Easier said than done, we know.
But reducing time to hire doesn’t just cut down on your workload — it also improves candidate experience exponentially.
When surveyed, 70% of respondents said that they’d been ghosted by candidates in the process. When candidates did tell them why they were dropping out, it was mostly because they’d found a better offer elsewhere. But a full quarter of respondents reported that their candidates said the hiring process was too slow.
There are obvious ways to make it faster and improve candidate experience while you’re at it, but what about the hidden gems?
- Look internally: If it makes sense for the role, opening it up internally first can be a great way to find qualified candidates who are already a known quantity and boost employee retention. At Zinc, 6 out of 59 hires in 2025 were internal moves (and big successes).
- Run parallel assessments: With the right automations, you can test skills, have initial screening calls, and run hiring manager interviews in overlapping stages to keep candidates engaged. Just be sure you’re not asking them for too much, though, so they’re not overwhelmed.
- Video “first touch”: At Zinc, the first round of screening is a video interview set and recorded by the hiring manager, which gives a glimpse of the candidate’s personality and their skills early on — and filters out those who aren’t truly invested in the role.
- Consider paid assessments: Kristina Alexander, Onboarding & HR Manager at BPP, pitched us on giving candidates a task, a deadline, and paying them for it. “This can eliminate endless interviews, because the hiring team can see what the candidate is capable of when they don’t have pressure,” she said. Where to make up the cost? Saving the time of stakeholders who don’t have to block out their calendars for interviews.
- Get really, really transparent: Publish salary ranges, interview steps, and decision timelines upfront. If anything changes, let candidates know as soon as you can to eliminate drop-off and set expectations.
- Train your team: Have a cross-functional pool of interviewers from teams across the business who can jump in when the hiring manager isn’t free and keep the process moving along. Be sure to provide training and support so they’re not going in blind.
- Gamify your employee referrals: Most companies offer £££ in return for successful referrals. But what about other perks? If you can’t afford to hand out cash, consider extra vacation days, charity donations, or other fun perks.
- Don’t wait for the debrief: Schedule time immediately following each interview for a 15-minute debrief to get interviewer feedback right away — not in 48 hours. But make sure feedback is submitted directly in the ATS to avoid bias.
Speed isn’t just from automation. It’s from cutting bottlenecks, being transparent, and making your process as efficient as possible.
4. Use AI to do your work for you
We know this is the most predictable point on this list. AI is everywhere — especially AI in recruitment — and while it might not be the absolute paradigm shift that was promised, it can take a lot of little, annoying things off your plate.
It’s all about knowing how to use it properly, whether that’s speeding up annoying manual tasks or taking things off your plate entirely. Start small, and work your way up with frequent check-ins as you go.
Key use cases include:
1. Automating candidate screening and shortlisting: AI should never be used to make decisions about a candidate’s suitability for the role. But it can be used to surface outstanding applicants, run workflows that check for key competencies, or source candidates. No matter what direction you go in, make sure final decisions are always made by humans, and you’re continually checking for quality and guarding against bias.
2. Writing job descriptions and running candidate outreach: The terror of a blank page is real. Tools like ChatGPT can help you build custom GPTs aligned with your brand voice and requirements for a consistent tone. Always review the output of AI to make sure it matches, and provide details to highlight what’s unique about the role.
3. Improve diversity, equity, and inclusion: A lot’s been said about how AI isn’t great for improving DEI efforts at companies. And it’s true — AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on, and data can be just as biased as humans.
AI can help you write unbiased job adverts, AI-driven sourcing platforms can cast a wider net by scanning millions of profiles. This skills-based approach means if a candidate has the capabilities needed, the AI can find them. They’ll also highlight "adjacent skills”: people who, with a little training, could fit the role, which can add diversity to your pipeline. But it learns from whatever data you put into it, so always pair with human review.
4. Better interview prep and analysis: How many times have you hung up from a screening call and realised you’ve forgotten to ask a key question about notice periods, salary requirements, or visa details?
Tools like Granola can help by automatically taking notes during your convos and turning them into searchable transcripts. They can also schedule interviews or write structured interview questions to help you save more time.
5. Make your background checks better
We know it’s predictable — after all, background checks are what Zinc’s all about.
But in our survey, we found that 75% of recruiters have had to delay hires because their background checks took too long. And when you’re trying to speed up your hiring process and improve candidate experience, well, that’s an easy fix (we think).
When it comes to a great background checking process that’s speedy for candidates, we’re obviously biased. But if you’re looking for a new provider or deciding if you should keep your checks in-house, here are a few things to keep in mind:
Your investment:
- Will you need to hire or train new team members?
- What software or tech will you need to run checks internally?
- Does the provider charge per check or with a subscription model?
- How much time will you save?
Candidate experience
- How will your team prioritise candidate experience? Can they?
- Does the platform make a good first impression on candidates and keep them in the loop?
Scalability
- If your hiring grows or slows, will you have to adjust team size?
- Do you have the right resources for global expansion, if needed?
- Can the provider flex with your business needs?
- Can it support periodic rechecks for your whole business?
Accuracy and efficiency
- How long will it take your team to run checks?
- If something goes wrong, what’s the plan to fix it?
- Is the provider truly automated or just hiding behind a large support team?
- Does it empower your team?
Get more ideas for improving candidate experience
70% of HR and TA pros tell us they’re feeling the pressure, and don’t think they can make a bad hire in today’s market.
And when you’re feeling the pressure, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and focus on your to-do list instead of the big picture. But improving candidate experience isn’t just a win for the hiring managers — it means higher-quality hires, faster processes, and a big brand level-up that boosts your reputation.
If you want more data on how your peers in TA and HR are feeling, alongside real-world actions you can take today to help tomorrow run smoother, we’ve got just the think
Read our latest report, “How to lose a candidate in 10 days,” to level up your candidate experience and stay ahead of the curve.
