Businesses know they must deliver exceptional candidate experiences in an increasingly competitive recruitment market. As a result, candidate experience has become a significant priority.

Candidate experience is vital for businesses to grow their brand and safeguard their future, from increased acceptance rates to creating brand ambassadors who refer their networks to the company's roles or products.

The case for delivering excellent candidate experience is incontestable. This article dives into why investing in your candidate's experience can lead to a positive return on investment. We shall explore how candidate experience can:

1. Transform your brand reputation.
2. Increase referrals and support your hiring needs.
3. Reduce your recruitment costs.
4. Grow revenue and your customer base.

Transform your business's reputation with candidate experience

Companies must create exceptional experiences for every individual who engages with their brand. Companies can build a stellar reputation and ensure that every candidate leaves their recruitment experience with a lasting positive impression by offering the white-glove treatment.

Positive candidate experience can create brand ambassadors from among your applicants, that in the war for talent is vital. Furthermore, a positive brand recall can increase applications for a company's positions and provide positive reviews.

Your candidate's words to their network or online are invaluable in attracting talent for future roles or as customers. Their ability to market your company to others can help bring new candidates to your jobs, create new business opportunities and enhance your employer's brand and reputation as an excellent place to work.

Create business advocates through candidate experience

To recruit successfully today and in the future, companies must build positive relationships with everyone they encounter.

Therefore, creating advocates for your company through candidate experience can be a crucial growth lever for your organization. Additionally, renown for candidate experience can help to:

1.  Attract outstanding talent.
2.  Build positive future relationships with present or prospective applicants.
3. Secure a consistent talent pipeline.

Both successful and unsuccessful candidates journey through the recruitment process, so depending on their experience, it can create detractors or promoters of an organization.

Hence, offering an excellent candidate experience can ensure that everyone walks away with good feelings about the company. A positive candidate experience may lead rejected candidates to apply again or refer their network to potential openings.

As a recent study shows, 80% of job applicants who didn't receive a job offer were more likely to re-apply if they had a positive impression of the hiring organization. Thus, helping a business to establish a talent pipeline for future hiring needs.

Conversely, if efforts to connect with top candidates aren't forthcoming, it may impact your candidates' conversion rates or lead them to take up positions at your competition. The loss of top talent's interest may force your search for new hires towards a smaller or less-qualified pool of applicants.

Excellent Candidate Experience can leave a critical impression on top talent, vital to satisfying skill gaps in a competitive landscape. When the perception of a company is positive, it creates brand advocates who may be the answer to your future hiring needs. Therefore, delivering exceptional candidate experience is vital in securing top talent, thus highlighting its investment value.

Save money with excellent Candidate Experience

Recruitment is an expensive process. A recent study by PWC found that HR costs made up 28% of a company's total operating expenses on average. However, excellent candidate experience can help to lower costs by increasing candidate referrals.

Great candidate experience can create brand advocates who will:

1. Buy your products.
2. Apply for future opportunities.
3. Champion your business to their networks. 

Peer to peer recommendations carry more weight today, and an increase in candidate referrals can generate interest in your roles at a cheaper cost than recruitment marketing.

Referrals can enable businesses to drive maximum opportunity and value from their candidate pool. An individual with a positive candidate experience is the perfect spokesman. Their testimonies regarding a company, its teams and what it can offer new employees can save businesses money.

The conviction of your brand ambassadors and their word-of-mouth marketing can reduce spending on advertising, divert resources elsewhere to create significant inbound benefits, plus decrease cost-per-hire or turnover rates. An investment in candidate experience means you utilize existing positive relationships with candidates to market yourself as the best place for great talent.

As a result, you lower recruitment costs and increase referrals, bringing quality candidates to your door.

Boost sales through Candidate Experience

For customers and candidates today, reputation is everything. Customers seek to have a positive connection with a company whose products they buy. 

Your candidates are your customers. The line between candidate and consumer has disappeared. Through exceptional candidate experience, you can build the positive connection integral to maintaining and growing your customer base.

Candidate experience is a powerful way of improving brand loyalty. Personal engagement and insight into an organization during the recruitment process are valuable tools for showcasing your brand. For example, 64% of candidates who had a positive candidate experience were willing to increase their relationships with companies.

Thus, highlighting how anyone in direct contact with a business is a potential customer.However, unhappy candidates can create disillusioned customers. Poor candidate experience can affect candidates' opinion of a company and their decision to spend money on its products.

A global survey by Software Advice revealed that 42% of candidates who have a terrible experience are highly likely to stop buying goods from that company. In addition, 34% are highly likely to tell their friends not to buy from that company.

Once the recruitment process has concluded, a candidate may likely encounter your brand. Whether in a professional capacity, conversations with friends and family, or as customers. In those three instances, positive memories can impact their decision making and affect your business.

The delivery of an excellent Candidate Experience can help you to increase the business relationship with potential customers.

Candidates may buy more of your products, increase conversion rates, or refer you to their networks based on their affinity. And so highlighting the value of candidate experience as a sales driver. 

Candidate Experience: A practical and attractive investment for businesses

Excellent candidate experience is crucial to a business's present and future. Its impact can create a stellar reputation from which revenue and sales are intertwined.

In addition, it can be a crucial growth lever, attracting outstanding talent and building positive future relationships with present or prospective applicants to secure a consistent talent pipeline.

Therefore, offering candidates the 'white glove treatment' has many benefits to a business in terms of a positive return on investment. In addition, by investing in a solution to measure or affect your candidate experience, you will see an impact on your company's top and bottom line. 

The potential benefits investing in candidate experience brings to a company include:

1. Transforming your business's reputation, increasing interest and renown amongst candidates or consumers.
2. Create brand advocates who may be the answer to your future hiring needs.
3. Save money on recruiting through increased referrals and peer to peer recommendations.
4. Grow your sales and revenue through a positive reputation.