This video features John Vlasetlica discussing why candidate experience matters and what candidates commonly expect from interview processes. Vlasetlica opens with an exercise asking viewers to list what they’d want referees to say after an interview, then summarizes survey and focus-group findings: candidates want an organized, fast, well-communicated process; prepared, smart and friendly interviewers; visible team alignment and diversity; realistic previews of culture; two-way Q&A about impact, learning, balance, flexibility, and social purpose.
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Candidate experience matters. So I want you for a moment, imagine you referred a friend or a former coworker for a job at your company. You call them up, they just had their interview. They just finished their interview. You call them up and you say, how'd it go? What did you think? What did you think about the people you met, the culture? What did you think about the job itself, the work? What did you think about the questions you were asked? What did you think about the process itself? What would you want them to say? What would you hope they would say about those kinds of things? I want you to take a minute, I want to do a brief exercise and I want you to pause the video in a second, open up a word doc or a Google Doc, and I want you to write down four or five things that you hope someone would say if they came in and interviewed with your team. What would you want them to say if someone called them up and said, how did it go? Be honest, how did it go? All right, pause the video and then come right back. Okay. Welcome back. Did you write down some things that you would want a candidate to say? Positive things I hope they'd say about the company or the job or the process or the questions they were asked, the people they met? We've held focus groups and surveyed thousands of candidates across the globe. And I want to share with you some of the things that we hear repeatedly from these focus groups and from these surveys. What do they want? Well, they want a process that's organized. They want people that are prepared. They generally want a fast process. If they're interviewing in person, they would like a bio break. And they want their expectations managed. They want to know what the next step in the process is. When they're telling us what they're looking for in the people, they want smart people, nice people. They want to see some diversity. They want to know that the team is aligned and they have high hiring standards. And they can tell that you have high hiring standards by the smart questions you're asking, the deep, probing questions you're asking. And they want to know that you care about a two way match. You're not just looking to sell them on a job. But they want to know that you care, that they want this kind of work, that this is a good fit for them too. Now, for culture, they want a realistic preview. What's it really like? I know your career site says all these things. You have all these testimonials, all these videos. You have nice diverse teams working together, smiling, maybe high fiving or patting someone on the back or something. Yeah, that's. On the career side, what is it actually like? What's it like to work here? What's the work like? How are decisions made? What's the quality of leadership? What are good and not so good parts of the job? And then they want some Q and A time. They want a two way conversation with you. They want honest answers. They want to understand the impact that this job can make. They want to understand the challenging problems they get to work on or have to work on. They want to understand the learning opportunity. How is this going to make them better at their craft? And they want to understand things like balance and flexibility and do you allow kind of remote work? And they want to know maybe something about the commitment you're making to doing good in the world.
