The drivers for Candidate Experience
Breaking the cycle
At Stuart, the recruitment team understands exactly how it feels to be a candidate in a bad experience, because they’ve been there. Starting with the human element of recruitment is why Candidate Experience is a huge priority for the team at Stuart.
“I’ve always been really passionate about it because there’s nothing worse than being involved in a horrendous Candidate Experience” –Corbmac McKay
Impression of the organization
The recruitment process generally gives candidates the first impression of an organization, and for Stuart it is crucial that the impression is a good yet honest one. In fact, they believe that a bad review can make or break the process for candidates.
Create meaningful experiences for candidates and hiring managers
The team wants candidates to come away from the recruitment process feeling like they have gained something positive from it. The process is as much about giving back to the candidates as it is about hiring for the role.
Corbmac believes that every candidate should come away feeling that they have gained something positive from the experience, whether it is learning to improve one of their skills, way of interviewing, or just a generally engaging experience from the company.
Stuart want to create a bespoke yet efficient experience for both candidates and hiring managers.
Improved recruiter reputation
In the industry, recruiters can sometimes have a bad reputation when it comes to Candidate Experience. But the recruiters at Stuart want candidates to know that they are different and value each candidate, regardless of the outcome.
At some organizations, their main objective is to hire candidates solely based on their skills for the role, rather than getting to know the candidates and hire based on values and the right fit for the role. But at Stuart, they make a conscious effort to really understand the candidates and the fit for both the role and the organization, taking care throughout the process.
How Starred helps
Improved team performance
Stuart uses Starred to help professionally develop the Talent Acquisition team, based on the data gathered from candidates and hiring managers. As recruiters have many metrics they have to work on, recruiters have 20% of their performance based on Candidate NPS and Hiring Manager feedback. For example, when it comes to negative feedback there is a clear process in place. Sometimes negative feedback can be unfair, but if someone is consistently receiving it on one area then they will receive training to improve this area and their performance.
They have also been able to help empower the team. By identifying the strong performers on Starred, they have been able to pair them up with those who need coaching to develop those skills and drive forward the professional development of the team.
With Starred, the team can clearly identify and address trends within the team. And in fact, Stuart are above the benchmark for their figures!
Internal team buy-in
At Stuart, the whole team passionately cares about Candidate Experience and they have been able to get a good buy-in across the team.
To do this they have:
- Shared progress on Slack - they share the monthly performance on Slack to the team to engage people with the data and share where they are at.
- Monthly digest - helps to inform the team, show where they are going and what they need to focus on. This has also helped them to build good relationships within the team.
Measuring the hiring team VS hiring manager
The team have found the insights into the switch between the talent acquisition team to when they go into interviews with hiring managers helpful to understand where the weaknesses lie.
Some hiring manager interviews did not run the same, but by exposing them to the data and clearly identifying where the weaknesses within the team are they have been able to create training programmes that deal with, and alleviate, those issues to help hiring managers interview and hire better.
Hiring Manager Satisfaction
The insights they gain from Hiring Managers allows them to understand more of the picture, not just from the candidates themselves but internally too. This can help identify concrete areas of improvement for recruiters internally too, to help develop their internal stakeholder skill set at Stuart.
They are able to gain insights that empower the team to learn and make changes.
Gaining a deep understanding of the whole process
By measuring their hiring team experience, Stuart has been able to get reliable, consistent data at scale. The data they have access to on their dashboard makes sense, allows them to clearly diagnose any issues and act on them.
“You can have a hunch about performance, but without the data to back it up you cannot do anything.” –Corbmac McKay