Welcome to the first chapter of learning about how to get started with Candidate Experience Surveys! We’ll start by defining what a Candidate Experience survey is, why it’s essential for your recruitment process, and how to set one up in a way that will bring you valuable results.
Happy Reading!
The Definition of a Candidate Experience Survey
So, what exactly is a Candidate Experience survey? In simple terms, it’s a questionnaire designed specifically for candidates who’ve recently been part of your hiring process. Regardless of how far into the recruitment process they get, or whether they accept your job offer, candidate surveys capture their honest feedback while the recruitment experience is still fresh in their minds, making it a powerful tool for gathering actionable data.
These surveys come in different forms (more on that in later chapters), but their goal is always the same: to collect data that helps recruitment teams improve their operations. It’s your chance to see the hiring process through the eyes of the top talent, pinpointing what’s working and what’s not.
If you measure candidate satisfaction you’ll gain valuable insights into the whole candidate journey from the initial contact with your company on the career page, through the application and interview process, all the way to onboarding.
Why Are Candidate Experience Surveys Important?
If you’re reading this chapter, chances are you already know how crucial Candidate Experience is to the success of your recruitment team's hiring strategy. Providing positive experience not only benefits the candidates, but it can also bring significant advantages to your company:
- Improved offer acceptance rate
- More efficient hiring pipeline
- Better quality of hire
- A strengthened Employer Brand
For a deeper dive into everything Candidate Experience, be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to Candidate Experience!
But why choose surveys to measure Candidate Experience? It all comes down to the fundamental principle: you can’t improve what you can’t measure.
What Are Candidate Surveys Good For?
Making Data-Driven Decisions
Candidate Experience Surveys provide you with concrete data to guide your hiring efforts and decision-making. Measuring Candidate Experience allows you to make informed changes rather than relying on guesswork. For example, it can help you create an action plan to increase your job offer acceptance rate and attract the most qualified candidates per opening.
Spotting Trends and Patterns
Surveys allow you to track trends over time. Are candidates consistently mentioning confusing interview process or unclear job descriptions? Identifying these patterns can help you address issues before they escalate. For example, rejected candidates could feel differently about the interview questions and hiring process than the hired ones.
Encouraging Continuous Improvement
By regularly gathering feedback, you create a culture of improvement within your recruitment team. This can not only result in positive Candidate Experience, but also keep the Talent Acquisition teams accountable. If each recruiter in the hiring team has access to their individual performance score, it helps them identify strengths and weaknesses in their recruiting strategies.
Benchmarking Success
Implementing candidate satisfaction surveys gives you a metric to measure your success against. You can compare your scores with industry benchmarks or even your own past performance, giving you a clear path to measure progress. Future candidates will also benefit greatly from a continuously improved recruitment process, as benchmarking allows you to identify gaps and refine their experience.
How to Set Up Candidate Experience Surveys?
Setting up a Candidate Experience survey is easier than you think, especially when you have a clear plan and the right tools. By reading this eBook, you're already taking a great first step, as you will learn everything you need to know to get started.
Checklist: How to Create a Candidate Survey
1. Define Your Goals
Start by identifying your objectives for the surveys. What do you want to collect feedback about? Is it company culture, recruiting process, hiring manager performance, or all of the above? Having a clear idea of what you want to measure will guide you in creating successful questionnaires. We suggest always including cNPS (candidate Net Promoter Score) in your surveys and using it as the overall metric to understand the candidate's experience.
2. Choose the Right Tools
Having the right tools can make all the difference in implementing candidate surveys in your strategy. For the most efficient processes, we recommend using a tool that supports automation, like Starred. Setting up automated workflows that are triggered by a specific step in the hiring process, will ensure that the surveys are sent at the right moment, increasing the response rate.
3. Identify Key Touch Points
Consider all the stages where job applicants will interact with your company. This could be the application process, interview rounds, or feedback after a decision for both rejected and hired candidates. We recommend measuring all of these touch points in your surveys to get a full picture of your company's situation.
However, sending out a survey for each candidate after every stage can lead to survey fatigue. To avoid that, we recommend sending out the survey at the beginning (Attraction & Employer Branding survey) and the end of the hiring process (Candidate Experience survey). You can learn more about the specific survey types in Chapter 3!
4. Design Candidate Experience Survey Questions
A well-rounded and comprehensive survey covers a range of topics and gives candidates the opportunity to give their honest feedback about the recruitment process. By asking stage-specific questions you will collect the most valuable Candidate Experience data. Lucky for you, we have a whole chapter dedicated to Candidate Experience survey questions and templates, read it here.
5. Test and Roll Out!
Before launching, it’s important to test the survey with a small group. This will confirm that the questions are clear, the survey flow is smooth, and the automation triggers work as expected. After that, you are ready to start collecting survey data!
For more tips on getting your surveys up and running, read the following chapters:
- Chapter 5: "When to Send a Candidate Experience Survey"
- Chapter 7: "Candidate Survey Invitation Emails: Tips & Templates"
How to Automate the Candidate Survey Process?
Automating the survey process is one of the smartest moves you can make. Instead of manually sending surveys to the qualified candidates and tracking responses, you set up a system that does it all for you. Having the right tools makes all the difference, allowing you to collect meaningful insights effortlessly and understand the candidate's journey better.
This is where platforms like Starred come in. Our Candidate Experience Analytics and Hiring Experience solution is specifically designed for gathering and analyzing feedback at various points in the recruitment process. Starred's customizable surveys, actionable analytics, and seamless integrations will help you make sense of the data. By automating surveys, you’ll not only save money and time but also minimize human error and create an efficient process for collecting and analyzing the key data points.
Check out the comparison between measuring Candidate Experience yourself vs. Starred if you are curious to learn more.
What's next?
Now that we’ve got the basis covered, the next step is exploring the North Star metric—candidate NPS. Read Chapter 2 to learn how to measure it and how it can guide you to the most valuable insights!