Imagine, you’ve created your Candidate Experience survey. But now what? It’s time to send those surveys out and start gathering valuable feedback. This is where today's chapter about writing an engaging survey invitation email comes in place.

The invitation email serves as your introduction, telling candidates why their feedback matters and encouraging them to participate. Done well, it can lead to a higher survey response rate and contribute to a positive Candidate Experience. Using survey email templates can streamline the process and ensure consistency in your communication.

In this chapter, we’ll cover our most important tips for writing compelling invitation emails. To make it even more practical, we have put together email invitation templates for Candidate and Hiring Manager Candidate Experience surveys.

How to Automate Your Survey Invitation Emails?

First, let’s talk about the number one thing that will make your survey emails as efficient as possible – automation. As we outlined in Chapter 1, automated Candidate Experience tools like Starred offer many benefits and can make your survey invitation emails more effective as well.

Key Benefits of Automation with Starred:

1. Scheduled Sending: With Starred’s automated solution, you can send survey invitations at different stages in the hiring process. For example, you can schedule the survey invitation to be sent 48 hours after the recruiter has sent out the rejection decision to the candidate. This automated delay will help to avoid bias because the survey will not appear directly after the rejection message.

1. Effortless Reminders: Create automated reminder emails to follow up with candidates who haven’t responded within 4–5 days. This way you don't miss out on collecting valuable insights and provide candidates with a smooth Candidate Experience until the end.
2. Customizable Templates: Tailor email invitation templates for all the relevant stages in your candidate's journey, to make sure your message stays relevant and personalized. We've included examples later in the blog.
3. Time-Saving Efficiency: Automation reduces manual effort, giving your team more time to focus on analyzing survey results and improving processes.

How to Write Survey Email Subject Lines

The first thing your candidates see when they open the inbox is the subject line. Crafting a good subject line can influence whether the recipient will open the email or not. We have prepared tips and examples that you can follow to create one that will result in clicks!

Write an Intriguing Hook

If your subject line immediately tells the recipient what the email is about, they might choose to ignore it if they are not in the mood to click through. So while the subject line “Your feedback on your experience with…” is informative and clear, it will give away the content right away. Instead, going for something that’s not too obvious about the content of the email but clear enough to get their attention can increase the open rate.

For example:

1. Your interview with (insert the name of your company)
2. We would like to hear from you!
3. How did it go?

Keep a Friendly Tone

Write a friendly and casual subject line if that is consistent with your company’s tone of voice, because why not go for a more fun, engaging choice of words? It will establish trust and make the automated survey invitation seem more natural.

For example:

1. Hey, how did we do?
2. Be honest, we can take it!

Personalize the Subject Line

If it’s applicable and appropriate depending on the type of survey, you can make the subject line as personal as possible. Mentioning the candidate's name, position, or stage in the recruiting process can make your email stand out. Show the candidate that you can relate to their rejection or celebrate the news of being hired.

For example:

1. (Name) your opinion is valuable: Help us improve!
2. (Name), congratulations on your new job! We want to hear from you.

And the same goes for your Hiring Manager surveys:

1. Congratulations on your new hire! We want to hear from you!

7 Tips on How to Write Candidate Survey Invitation Emails

Even though the survey invitation emails are usually very short, they influence whether the candidate will participate in the survey or not. After all, for a lot of candidates, this is the message they will receive shortly after they have been rejected. To make sure you gather meaningful feedback that drives data-informed decisions, we have prepared the best practices for creating the text of survey emails.

1. Choose the Right Tone of Voice

You should focus on the style of your writing: do you want your email to sound very professional and serious, or would you rather make it more fun and engaging?

Here are some things to consider when making this decision:

1. What is your company’s tone of voice?
2. What is your audience? Are you mostly hiring young adults or are you fishing from a larger pond?
3. Would you rather have a longer email with more information or a more simple and straight-to-the-point text?
4. What can you add to your email to make it special?

2. Communicate the Survey Time

Imagine receiving an email asking you to answer a few questions. You may decide to open it and start answering… First question, second question, third question. Then you get to the fifth question and you are like “Oh my God, I didn’t realize I would have to spend 30 minutes doing this!”. You close the page and you’re gone…

Give your candidates an estimation of the time they will need or the number of questions you’ll be asking, so they know how much effort it will take to complete the survey. This will make sure that even lazier respondents might decide to go on with the survey!

3. Use Tags to Personalize the Email

Similarly as with the subject line, try to make the invitation email as personal as possible, almost as if it was drafted just for that person. The best thing to do is to use custom fields as tags in your text. You could use the tag of their name and the job the candidate has applied for, or the recruiter that they have spoken with. Even the city they were going to work in will make the email stand out!

4. Embed Questions in Your Email

Embedding a question directly within your survey invitation emails can significantly boost your survey response rates. With Starred recipients can start the survey without leaving their inbox, making it more convenient for them to provide feedback. This seamless experience can lead to better engagement and more survey responses.

And if they only end up answering that first question, Starred offers a feature called "NPS auto-capture". This means that if the respondent leaves the page after clicking on an NPS score in the invitation Starred still captures the NPS score for you! Having the NPS data is already enough to get the first impression of your Candidate Experience and benchmark against others.

Learn about the benefits of measuring cNPS in Chapter 2!

4. Encourage Honest Feedback

If you’re asking candidates for feedback, you want to hear it, right? By highlighting how important it is for you to get transparent and honest feedback, you’ll provide a safe space for your candidates to share their feelings. Showing that you actually care can drive them to decide to complete the survey.

You could say something like:

1. What went well? Where can we do better? We’d like to hear your honest opinion!
2. We value your feedback and we will use it to improve the experience for our future candidates, so please be honest!

5. Clarify Anonymity

It’s really important to specify in your invitation whether the survey is anonymous or not. That is because the possibility of answering anonymously could be a big reason why somebody would choose to complete the survey. So let your candidates know about this upfront!

Examples of how you can communicate it:

1. Because we value your honest and open feedback, we made this survey anonymous.
2. This survey is not anonymous but you can choose to answer anonymously by checking the box at the bottom of this survey.

Or, if you are collecting feedback non-anonymously, you can say:

1. Because we care about each one of our candidates, we have chosen to make this survey not anonymous, so we can reach out to you about your responses and have the chance to really talk to you.

6. Highlight the Survey Link

Your survey link should be highly visible and easy to click on, guiding the survey participant directly to the survey page. Don't place the survey link at the very bottom of the email, where candidates can't see it right away. Consider using a button or hyperlink with a call-to-action such as "Share Your Feedback" to encourage engagement. Additionally, make sure that the survey link is mobile-friendly, as many recipients may access their emails on mobile devices.

7. Thank Your Respondents

When somebody does something for you that they didn’t “have” to do, thanking them is the least you could do. So don't be shy and remind your respondents in your invitation email how grateful you are for their responses!

With Starred surveys, they will also see a nice "Thank You" page at the end of the survey. One of the options is a dynamic "Thank You" page, where based on the candidate's sentiment you can show them a customized message. For example, if they are happy, you can forward them to Glassdoor.

Candidate Survey Invitation Templates

In this section, we have compiled survey invitation email templates for different scenarios that you can encounter when starting to measure Candidate Experience. However, we strongly recommend customizing your text and making it as personalized as possible so that it feels like a personal email to your candidates, as well as something that reflects your brand truly.

If you need help creating the Candidate Experience survey questions, find tips and templates in Chapter 3!

Survey Invitation Email for Hired Candidates

Below find an email template that can be used to collect valuable feedback from your hired candidates. We recommend sending the survey email one day after they have received the news of being accepted.

Survey Email Template:

Subject: Welcome to [company name]: share your experience with us!

Invitation text:

• Dear [first name],
• Congratulations on your new role at [company name]! We’re excited to welcome you onboard.
• Our goal is to always improve our recruitment process so we can deliver a great experience to every candidate.
• As someone who has gone through our entire interview process, your fresh perspective is extremely valuable to us. Would you mind letting us know how we did by answering this feedback survey?
• Your feedback is extremely valuable to us, so please be honest! This survey is [non-]anonymous and will be used for internal purposes only.
• We’d like to start with the first question:
• [NPS Question]
• Thank you on behalf of our recruitment team!

Survey Invitation Email for Withdrawn Candidates

Crafting a personalized email for candidates who have withdrawn will increase your chances of understanding why they decided to leave your hiring process. Find an example below of a survey invitation email that acknowledges their decision and asks for honest feedback.

Survey Email Template:

Subject: Your interview with [company name]: Would you mind telling us how we did?

Invitation text:

• Dear [first name],
• Thank you for taking the time to apply for a role at [company name]. We are very sorry that we weren’t the right choice for you at this time.
• As somebody who has recently gone through our recruitment process, we’d love to hear your thoughts about your interview experience for the role and what we could have done better to get you onboard.
• Your feedback is extremely valuable for us and it can help us understand what we can improve, so please be honest!
• This survey is [non-] anonymous and will be used for internal purposes only.
• We’d like to start with the first question:
• [NPS Question]
• Thank you on behalf of our recruitment team!

Survey Invitation Email for Rejected Candidates

Collecting candidate feedback from rejected candidates is one of the most crucial steps in improving your Candidate Experience. With rejected candidates being the biggest group, sending out a well-made email is necessary to collect meaningful survey data. Below find two examples of rejection survey messages.

If you need more convincing as to why rejected candidates shouldn't be neglected, read Chapter 5.

Survey Email Template for 'rejected after application':

Subject: How did we do at [company name]?

Invitation text:

• Dear [first name],
• At [company name] we aim to provide a great experience to all our candidates.
• As you recently applied for a role at [company name], your fresh perspective is extremely valuable to us, so we'd really appreciate you letting us know your thoughts about the application process.
• Your feedback will help us create a better candidate experience, so please be honest! This survey is [non-] anonymous and will be used for internal purposes only.
• We would like to start by asking:
• [NPS Question]
• Thank you on behalf of our Talent team!

Survey Email Template for 'rejected after interview':

Subject: Your interview with [company name]: Let us know how we did!

Invitation text:

• Dear [first name],
• At [company name] we aim to provide a great candidate experience.
• As you recently applied for a position with us, you have a fresh perspective on our recruitment process.
• We'd really appreciate you letting us know how your experience was, what we did well, and what we can work on improving.
• Your feedback is extremely valuable to us, so please be honest! This survey is [non-]anonymous and will be used for internal purposes only.
• We’d like to start with the first question:
• [NPS Question]
• Thank you on behalf of our recruitment team!

Survey Invitation Templates for Hiring Managers

Hiring managers can give you an even deeper understanding of your recruitment strategy. You can learn about their collaboration with recruiters and hear their suggestions on how to improve candidate satisfaction. Hiring managers have an average response rate of 24%, therefore nailing the first communication is key to getting them engaged.

Survey Email Template:

Subject: Congratulations on your new hire!

Invitation text:

• First of all, a big thank you from [company name] for helping us find the best talent!
• As a recent Hiring Manager, you have a fresh perspective that we really value. We'd really appreciate it if you would take a couple of minutes of your time to let us know how you experienced your partnership with the recruiting team, so we can work on improving and delivering a better experience to all.
• Your feedback is extremely valuable to us, so please be honest! This survey is [non-]anonymous and will be used for internal purposes only.
• We’d like to start with the first question…
• [NPS Question]
• Thank you for helping us improve and learn.

If you are curious to see more templates for survey invitation emails, find them here! Find templates for different rejection stages, quality of hire, and onboarding feedback.

What's next?

Once you've sent the survey invitation, you might be eagerly anticipating a flood of responses. However, without taking the right next steps, those responses may not come as quickly as you'd hoped. Luckily, our next chapter is here to help! In Chapter 8, you can find tips and strategies on how to increase the response rate of your Candidate Experience surveys.