Candidate Experience Champion

Kristine Boccio is the Recruiting Operations Manager, Americas at Elastic. Her role oversees everything right through from interview scheduling to onboarding, as well as any reporting needs and managing any new systems. 

“We thrive on bottom-up communication, ownership and respect, and all of this enables our people to do their job in the best environment which is so important to us” 

[$quote]Kristine Boccio[$quote]
[$quote]Recruiting Operations Manager, Americas[$quote]

The Talent Acquisition team is a global team, made up of over 40 team members within recruiting, recruitment operations and talent brand marketers. They can hire almost anywhere in the world, operating a global and spread out team.

“Why wouldn’t you want to measure Candidate Experience? Candidate Experience overall has such an impact on the business. It is so important to measure the entire experience so you can track, see what adjustments need to be made and just ensure you’re not using out on top talent. I think that happens more than people are aware of.” 

Elastic’s Recruitment Challenge

The recruitment team needed automation

They had previously had rejected and hired survey set-up, but the process was extremely manual and time intensive for the team. They found it tedious to collect data this way and it didn’t provide the insights they wanted.

The team wanted to share internally

‍The team at Elastic wanted to be completely transparent with the process, and ensure that they were all doing their best to provide a good Candidate Experience.

"When it comes to candidate experience, a lot of this is just accountability and making sure we are holding our end of the bargain. Making sure we are doing what we can to provide candidates with top-notch experience"

Required the tools to understand the data to improve

Candidates with Elastic touch so many different touch points within the process, but didn’t have the tools to tell a story or be transparent. They have had feedback in the past where they received negative feedback, they felt like they were failing candidates and they wanted to be able to dig further to understand the candidates 

Needed better and clearer insights into the process

Elastic are driven by constantly improving, and as such they wanted to be able to have better and clearer insights into the process the candidates go through. They wanted to gather data at scale, but data that was rich with insights and that was actionable. 

Solution and Results

Provided clarity on how the candidates felt

‍The team felt they didn’t know the why behind how candidates felt about the process, and this is where Starred came in. By using Starred, they have been able to understand exactly what the process looks like from a candidates point of view 

“Candidate Experience is an evolving journey, and we need to stay on top of what is happening.”

They also have benefitted from the individual Recruiters and Recruitment managers having access to the data, being able to use this to build a picture on how their own team is performing and which areas are good or bad. 

“Being able to provide Starred to recruiters that allows them to dig a bit deeper into their hiring teams is crucial. It’s valuable, insightful information that they need to see.”

Automated and optimized data collection

Elastic has been able to automate and optimize the questions they ask candidates to gather more data to understand the full picture. They have also found significant benefit in the comments, allowing them to build a clear view of the process. 

By doing this with Starred, the team at Elastic have been able to save the time from the manual process and use this to focus on making improvements.

“It can open up our eyes. Maybe there are other areas that we need to look into a bit further.”

Full transparency across the entire global hiring process

Elastic operated in three phases to start with collecting Candidate Experience data across rejected and hired, then hiring manager data to be able to understand what the process means for many different stakeholders, and finally, focusing on a global voice. It’s important for Elastic to have a global mindset, being aware of all the different cultures and being able to relate to people. 

After initially just collecting data from Hired and Rejected, Elastic now collects data from the initial interview stage right through to the offer providing them with a wide breadth of rich data. 

‍“The reason for doing this is that at these stages, candidates are actually considered applicants but they are going through the process and speaking with various team members. It’s not just recruiting. It’s important that we understand the impact of other hiring teams and what that looks like.”

Easily identify improvements resulting in +10% NPS from reject candidates within 6 months

Elastic have been able to really identify where they could improve, for example within the interviewing team. One question they feel brings a lot of value is ‘How prepared was the interviewer?’ as this allows them to pinpoint the cause. Sometimes it is as simple as the interviewer requires a bit of extra training or the scorecard isn’t set-up properly. Starred allows them to focus on the big impact areas and continuously improve the process, which has resulted in a +10% NPS, from 14 to 25 NPS, for rejected candidates in 6 months. 

"Sometimes it’s the simply questions that allow us to tell a much bigger story"

Internal Accountability and Training Programme

‍A follow-up initiative by Elastic was the introduction of extra training for interviewers. A testament to Elastic’s commitment to delivering extraordinary Candidate Experience is the launch of the Feedback Friday newsletter by the recruitment team. While it doesn’t steer clear from uncomfortable feedback, it’s an even more powerful platform to celebrate Candidate Experience success!

“For us, transparency is key. We want to make sure we are very open and honest as far as what’s going on. Whether that’s areas to improve on or what’s going really great.”