What Does Your Candidate Experience Say About Company Culture?

I follow a number of HR groups online. It’s a great way to expand my HR knowledge, see how different companies manage their HR functions, as well as to share my own knowledge and experiences with others.

Recently, while scanning through one Facebook group, I came upon a question that stood out. “Do you think it’s ok that managers are consistently late for interviews and leave candidates waiting for 15-20 minutes?”

Reading through the comments, many respondents addressed the base issue- No, you shouldn’t make a habit of being late for interviews. But none addressed the impact that doing so could have on the organization and its reputation, or in other words, how candidates viewed the company’s culture.

The candidate experience is critical to any organization in order to hire and retain top talent. And it starts as soon as a candidate clicks on a job posting. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your candidate experience and how it reflects your company culture.

1. What does your job posting say about your company culture?
2. Is your application process quick and simple, or do you require candidates to fill out screen after screen of information that you can probably pull from their resume?
3. Once an application is submitted, do you send a “Thank you for your application” response? How quickly do you review and respond to applications? Do you notify candidates in a timely manner if they are not selected?
4. When the candidate arrives for an interview, how are they greeted and are the interviewers prepared for the meeting? Are candidates left waiting on a regular basis?
5. If, after the interview, you decide you like the candidate and want to continue to move forward, do you give them a tour and introduce them to other employees?
6. You’ve made an offer and they’ve accepted. Now what? Is there contact between the time they accept the offer and their start date? That may include sending them pre-hire paperwork, providing them with their orientation schedule, or simply having a few members of the team they will join reach out to introduce themselves.

The candidate experience is a great reflection of an organization’s culture. If the experience is a great one, candidates will think highly of the organization and want to join that culture. If the experience is a bad one, you will not only lose that candidate to another organization (maybe even a competitor) but you’ll earn the reputation of a company that doesn’t value candidates, and in turn, employees.

Does your candidate experience reflect your company culture?