The Future of Candidate Experience: Panel 1 from SocialTalent Live

This week's podcast episode was originally broadcast during our recent Social Talent Live event where VP of Research at ERE Media, Kevin Grossman shouted to Cheryl Peterson, Associate principal and regional talent Resourcing Leader at arup, all about what drives a positive candidate experience. If you missed this free event when it was broadcast live, be sure to sign up for the next one over on socialtalent.com live. Enjoy. So to get started, I'd like to welcome our guests for the first discussion of today's event. I'd like to welcome to the stage Kevin Grossman and Cheryl Pearson. Kevin, it's an absolute pleasure to have you. Cheryl, an absolute pleasure to have you. And Kevin, over to you.

Johnny, thank you so much and thank you all for joining us today. Cheryl, how are you?

I'm good. Good to see you.

Excellent. I'm good. I'm doing really good. I like, I always like to joke I comb my hair this early on the West Coast. So all ready to go. So, Cheryl, I want to, I want to dive in. I've got a few questions for you in this short segment that we have, but just to kind of set the stage a little bit. Hate to be kind of a buzzkill out of the gate, but it's been rough in recruiting as a profession the past couple of years in particular, and it's also been rough on the candidate experience. In fact, this year in our data and research, candidate frustration and resentment as we measure it every year is high, higher than it's ever been, unfortunately. There's a lot of reasons for that that we can talk about. I mean, the poll question alone answered part of that too. Right. The teams are leaner, they're struggling overall to, to respond to every single candidate. And it's an uphill battle for any company of hiring scale and in volume at the end of the day. But you have, you've done a lot of great work at irap. And I wanted to first kind of ask you, even in this environment today that we're in with candidate resentment being higher, what are the key recruiting improvements that you've made that impact candidate experience over the past 6 to 12 months? Just give us some examples of what you've been focused on.

Yeah, it's a balance between adding in the AI, we have high volumes of candidates that apply for our positions, luckily. And I think it's a balance of, of listening and hearing what candidates had to say about it being impersonal. When we got feedback that we went to a pre recorded video interview, but we didn't tell them that we were doing that. So some of it's low hanging fruit like adding that into your job posting and saying that you're going to be adding that in as a first step in the process and that it's a benefit to them because we wouldn't have gotten to them before. Right. Sometimes it's just about reframing and shaping how maybe automation is being used in the process. And it's not to weed them out but to actually bring them in to have a human conversation and a human interaction. Some of the other things that we've done are that we have been looking at the feedback timeframe. So we heard loud and clear from our survey results that candidates wanted to get more immediate feedback and know where they were at in the process. And so something as simple as implementing interview debriefs and making sure that those are scheduled with service level agreements 24 hours like immediately following the interview so that we can give candidates feedback right away. We know that talent was flying off the shelf and that we really needed to make sure that we addressed that. And then in terms of just the resentment piece of it, I mean people are always going to be so disappointed when they don't get the job. So we've done a lot around just engaging with our talent and creating talent pipelines of candidates so that when you're letting them down, you're letting them down gently. And we're not sending them a email where actually we heard loud and clear from our candidates, they want to hear from us. We might not be able to tell them exactly why, why, but if they are a fit to arup, what we want them to know is we want to stay engaged with you. Please join our talent community. We've started doing with recruitment marketing branded newsletters that keep them engaged with arap. They're talking to recruiters beyond just that role and we're seeing significant improvements in how our candidates are staying engaged with us over the long term.

I want to unpack a couple of things that you said in there because, well, it's a lot, but I mean this is a testament to employers big and small across industries that we work with every year, that Johnny and his team work with every year in regards to improving the recruiting process and ultimately how that impacts the candidate experience and the recruiter experience and the hiring manager experience, which we can't forget all of those. But you referenced first of all that no matter what you do, there is going to be unfortunately a negative response from candidates when they are, they are the ones who don't get the offer at the end of the day. Right. And there's two SKUs in our data every, every year at the candidate experience benchmark research program. It's a lot of words, but I said it. There's two skews in our data. There's the positive skew for the people who actually get hired. Those are the only happy customers at the end of the day. Right. The people who got the job. And then the other skew is everybody else. And it's usually a negative skew, even if they felt like it was a positive and fair experience. You touched on an important point, right. You said that you made a change in how you're screening candidates doing one way recorded. Is that what you said?

Yeah. We did a pre recorded video interview for our campus recruitment where we see tremendous high volume and just not being able to even get to even a fraction of the candidates that apply. They get knocked out or they don't even, you know, through ofccp, they don't even get looked at because you can only get to so many. Yeah.

And, and, but it's, it's an important point because you, it was about context, right. That one of the things that you saw a little bit of a backlash in regards to why are you doing it this way? Because to be, I mean in our data and research, the candidates don't like the one way recorded. It's a valuable tool for the employer. But I think when, when there's context given to the candidates. So can you explain that a little bit further? How, how did you give them the context of why you're doing this?

Yeah, yeah. So it starts with a couple different things. So on the campus side we do a. Ahead of the season we do an info session with all of our campus rec professionals in the, on the college side. Right. So whether it be faculty, student advisors, the career service centers, and we explain to them our process and we explain to them why we do the prerecorded video interview and how they can help to prep the candidates as that are going to go through the process. We've now added it into our job postings where we'll say right on the very bottom of the job posting, first step in the process will be a pre recorded video interview due to high volume. And this is a great way for you to tell us who you are beyond your resume. Right. Because before it was just a resume. So they see that and they go, oh wait, it's more than just a resume. Okay, I'm going to give myself that advantage. We also looked at There was just some process things in that where we realized some candidates were doing more than one video interview. And how do you just go in and fix your process? And that was an easy one. Like why did someone do eight video interviews for basically a campus recruiting internship? Did it really matter if it was a different job? It's still an internship. Right. So we fixed some of that and then it really is about on our career site. We've also updated on the career site what happens in our process and when it happens. So that, that way it's just. They just want transparency. They just want to know and then the key thing is under committing and over delivering. If you say you're going to get back to them in five days, do it in three. Some recent studies around that I'm sure you've seen just show how much more the wow factor helps to support you in a really tough situation versus the opposite. Which would be to say, hey, I'll get back to you in three days and you get back in 10.

I don't think we haven't seen the jobs report for August yet. Right. I don't think we have, not yet in the States at least. But I, I mean there are still, as of last month there were still more jobs than there were candidates looking for those jobs or applying for those jobs, even though it's not the market that it was two years ago. But you touched on some really important things in regards to transparency to the candidates. It's always a big win every year in our more of a positive sentiment. And it's also perception of fairness which we know at the end of the day is very subjective. Right. When it comes to that. But those are things that do make a difference when they understand the context and the why of why they're doing these things. Before you even got to that point, I'm curious what was some of the steps internally for you to move to this one way recorded video based. And I'm just, I'm curious more about how did you get the buy in internally with your team, with leadership? What was the business case that you made that we need to do this to help us screen further?

Yeah, so some of it was being really transparent again and looking at and kind of lifting up the hood of what happens in the recruitment process and being vulnerable enough to share. We got 50,000 applications, you know, hiring manager team. We only got to 4,000 of them. So I don't really know if there was quality we left on the table. And as soon as you start telling them that there's quality left on the table. They're like, let's dig deeper and explore. And so that's exactly what we did. And we started just showing, knowing, you know, the data. I work with engineers and they love the data. So how many candidates apply, how many candidates did you talk to? How many candidates did you now get to through doing the pre recorded video interviews? And okay, how can we continue to get more candidates through the process? And what that freed up for them was that they said we want to be able to engage with and talk to the candidates that we know are the best fit for our role. They didn't want to get more immersed in like the other, other approach was hey, can you review all these resumes and tell us who you want to talk to? I'm one person and I can't get through it all. So really the buy in came from it allows you to balance between getting through the high volume with some automation, having another layer of screening that's in there because now hiring managers could view these videos. And it wasn't just, not that there wasn't a credibility with recruiters that when we said you should talk to this person, but ultimately every hiring manager thinks they're the technical expert obviously on what they're looking for. And so when you look or assess at someone when they can look at that video and say oh yeah, I love that person's response, it just was like an enabler of expediting getting somebody into the process. And so we've seen a lot of value in that. So it was really kind of demonstrating it for them, sharing the successes, getting a couple of key advocates in the business who we knew and that was strategic. Right. You find who it is that you know has a voice in the organization that you might not have and then capitalizing on that and having them be your voice and your advocate, that is fantastic.

Let's jump ahead in the candidate journey. So we were talking more on the front end on the screening side prior to more screening and interviewing. But then you get to those individuals that you are going to make offers to that you are counting on, that hopefully will accept them and then help you grow and sustain your organization. Right. That's the ultimate outcome for you as a talent acquisition team is to put get those people in the door and make them those new hires. It's also been a little bit of a rough road on the pre boarding onboarding side. Right. So you in regards to just keeping candidates engaged and nurtured, getting their hiring managers to talk to them before they start on Day one. So talk a little bit as we round out our segment. What you focused on in that later stage to make again at more of an engaging retention starter out of the gate. Right. Because that's really what pre boarding to onboarding is all about.

Yeah, yeah. So it's really about when I talked earlier and I said it's not transactions, it's interactions, those interactions start way before candidate applies. The recruiter is the key piece of that. And so when you head into the onboarding and the pre boarding piece, it can't. We're in a four legged, you know, relay race. If we kind of go back to the Olympics and it's a baton handoff. Right. And you know, you've seen the baton if it gets dropped, what happens when someone's not looking and you're not connecting that relationship and passing that relationship on to the next step? Right. So we've really spent a lot of time focusing in on making sure that we're bringing in the key stakeholders. So some of the improvements that we've made or even internally, the communication that we send to hiring managers, updating our templates and saying, you know, congratulations, this person has accepted, here's the next steps in the process so that we're making sure that we're still owning that even though we're not responsible for it. So hiring manager, please make sure that by Tuesday you reach out to this candidate, welcome them on board, start building your onboarding plan, make sure that you've got a plan, that your team's coming in the first week, maybe you're doing a lunch with them, whatever your company decides to do based on budgets, but it's an engagement piece, being able to connect with people on LinkedIn. Welcome to the team. We're so glad to have you, you know, bringing that more broader so that people aren't showing first day, whether that's virtually or in person feeling like not connected to the broader team. And so I think that's important. And the other thing that, you know, it builds on from the beginning of the process is every step along the way we added in different engagement pieces that help them to understand the diversity of our organization and we give them information about the benefits early on and that kind of stuff. So that when you're doing the offer, part of the offer stage also is we have a conversation with them that helps them to prepare for their next steps. So as recruiters, we're, you know, advising them on how they're going to give their notice at their current company. We're advising them on things they might want to do and think about before day one, because we're not giving them anything to learn about the firm and we don't want them doing work. But here's how you can kind of get your mindset and giving them some best practice and tips, kind of career counseling. And then we make sure that the hiring managers are set up for success and partner with our business partners who are helping to onboard individuals. And then most importantly, we don't forget about them after day one. So, yes, we sometimes do coffee with our hires that we bring on board and check in on them and see how they're doing. We were that initial relationship to arup. We don't want them to lose that. We get valuable insight from them on their onboarding and their experience because they're comfortable sharing it with us when they might not be comfortable sharing it with their supervisor or with their broader business partner. So we can be the eyes and ears for that retention, which is really important.

Yeah. Thank you so much. And going back to the whole baton analogy, I trip over my baton all the time, so that's not. But I can tell you that it does make a huge difference, all the things that you were outlining. It's fascinating and disheartening at the same time that every year in our candy benchmark research data globally, we see that new hire candidates tell us that it's less than 50%, usually around 40ish percent, that say they actually hear from their hiring manager before day one. And I've had even some people say, wow, that it's that high, you know, and it should be a lot higher than that. At the end of the day. It really makes a big difference. It doesn't necessarily, you know, that that activity won't necessarily impact what happens on day 90, day six months out, 12 months out, because that's a whole different part of the equation. Although it's still constantly an internal candidate experience right at the end of the day if you want to retain your employees. But those things make up a big difference. The last thing, just real quick, I mean, is there any feedback at all given to your finalists, especially those that aren't made offers? Do you give any feedback to candidates at all?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously from a compliance perspective, there are certain things you can say and you can't say, but we absolutely give them feedback in terms of where we feel that there is. Sometimes they'll even ask us, like, could I have done something differently in the process? Right. And it's like if we know that there's something that's going to help, that's going to be an advocate for them doing better and showing up better. As they continue to engage with arup. We certainly want to give them that feedback. But many times candidates, you know, they just want to know that will I still be considered like that feedback enough knowing that you're a silver medalist. It was a really tough decision. You know, we chose one. One candidate over the other. Does it really matter at the end of the day why we chose that other candidate? That's not as important as. Do you see me as still a fit to arup? Am I still going to be considered for other opportunities and can I count on you? Not that this is how it's said, but can I count on you, recruiter, to be my advocate and getting me somewhere else in the organization? If so, I'm going to stay engaged with you and I, I want to be in your talent community and your pipeline, in your pool. Don't just spam me if you're really not interested in, you know, having me come on board. So again, I really think it's that added connection.

Yeah, it does. Thank you, Cheryl. It makes a huge difference in the candidate journey at any, at any stage for that matter. Communication and feedback are always perennial differentiators. Every year in our research, I saw that Johnny came on. Hi Johnny.

Hey guys.

Are we, are we wrapping up?

So, so we're wrapping up and, but, but, but you know, I want to just maybe, maybe ask Kevin to share. You know, I'm a massive fan of the candy candies. I know, Cheryl, you're a fan of the candies can experience awards, the research that it gives you, the insights. Kevin, if anyone here listening wants to know more about the candies, the work your organization does around the world, how can they reach out or where should they go?

So you can connect with me on LinkedIn for sure. @ Kevin Grossman, you can find me easily. I use my middle initial W so that is there. And then you can also go to eremedia.com candidate experience to learn more about our benchmark research program.

If you remember all that. Good luck, Cheryl. Kevin, thank you so much. It's been really insight and really glad you teed us up nicely for our discussion here today for our first panel. So thank you both, awesome.

Thank you.