1-click applications are a godsend for recruiters and candidates, right?

They give top talent a fast-forward button to your vacancy, meaning you don’t miss out on those stellar candidates too busy being brilliant to complete an entire application form from scratch. Convenience for candidates and a steady flow of engaged applicants into your ATS (not to mention greater resource efficiency) for you.

Another win-win layer of hiring automation. Trebles all round!

Except it isn’t so straightforward. Like so many steps in the march to automated recruiting, 1-click applications present a precarious trade-off between efficiency, employer branding and candidate experience.

It’s a basic tenet of motivation: the easier something becomes, the less commitment it requires and the lower its perceived value.

If you see a job you really want, you’re willing to run through walls to get it. When you’re offered a one-step, no-hassle way to apply, it suddenly feels cheaper, less worthwhile. “Who’s to say,” thinks the applicant, “that an army of unqualified candidates isn’t right now blindly clicking in their application, swamping the process in mediocrity?”

As a qualified candidate, maybe that will work in your favour, maybe not. The one thing you do know is that you’re in an unedifying numbers game for an employer you now respect slightly less.

Even worse, automated hiring turns all of those unqualified 1-click chancers into potential critics. An unsatisfactory response, whether it’s a terse and cursory automated email or their application ending up in the notorious ATS black hole, casts a long shadow over your employer brand.

In other words, you’ve ended up making naysayers of people who should never have been anywhere near your employer brand in the first place. On the bright side, at least you’ve inflated your ATS with the details of a few more irrelevant applicants you’ll never so much as glance at again.

Sarcasm aside, we have genuine concerns about the payoff between process efficiency and reputation management of automated hiring systems like 1-click application. Likewise automated ATS email responses and artificial intelligence in online video interviewing.

Recruitment is an innately human business, probably more so than any other. A candidate’s suitability for a role is ultimately determined by a nuanced set of intangibles: ambition, worldview, accomplishments, confidence, rapport, cultural fit and so on.

Humans simply do not miss these critical factors in the way that automated processes (what Liz Ryan dubbed “inhuman systems of recruitment” in her epic Forbes takedown of recruiting technology) all too easily can. Meanwhile your goodwill as an employer is being eroded every time a candidate rubs up against the blank void in the automated process where human interaction would otherwise be.

This is a long way from saying that technology plays no role in enhancing recruitment. It’s simply to caution that every automated step added to a hiring process diminishes its humanity and increases its fallibility.

Most jobs are worth more than a single click.

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Image © R.E.M. Automatic For The People, Warner Bros. Records

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Why now? Because in today’s candidate-driven market, those in demand are making informed choices between multiple offers. So when you see the thought, effort and innovation some employers put into their candidate experience, you’ll know where you might need to improve for your offer to be the chosen one. (Unless you work at one of the companies below, in which case: keep it up!)

We’ve found big-name employers across sectors raising the bar at different stages of the candidate journey, plus one tech giant that hit upon a unique way to revamp a failing process.

Here’s what you’re up against:

1. T-Mobile: Winning at the attraction/research stage

In this instance, T is for transparency. T-Mobile’s careers site is a crystal-clear window into the company’s employer brand, hiring process and individual vacancies. As well as displaying Glassdoor reviews, each role page tells candidates how long the vacancy has been open and how many people have so far applied. Elsewhere on the site, infographics and videos explain the hiring process to the nth degree.

The result? Candidates approach their application 100% informed and enthused about T-Mobile, without hesitation or reservations. They’re several steps closer to the company before they’ve even filled in the first application field.

2. AT&T: Winning at the application stage

That last point leads us neatly to AT&T. The telecoms giant had serious issues with its applications. They took too long and applicants disliked the process so much that over 70% of mobile applicants gave up before the end.

AT&T’s solution was bold, beautifully simple and devastatingly effective. Cutting the number of application fields from 75 to 31 resulted in an overall completion rate of 79%, with mobile completions leaping from below 30% to 65%. Based on a cost per application of $6.50, AT&T estimates that this one slick move saved them $1m in a single year.

3. Hootsuite: Winning at the screening stage

Rejection is the part of the process that hurts candidates the most, but arguably the one many employers are least engaged in. Not so Hootsuite, exemplar of our earlier candidate experience post.

Rejection is the part of Hootsuite process we loved the most. As they put it, “how a company handles that delicate situation says a lot about their character… We are dedicated to ensuring applicants who do not move forward get as much resource towards getting a positive experience as the applicants who do.”

How? By revamping their rejection emails to let candidates down gently, invite them to keep in touch and provide a curated suite of job search resources. Engagement at its thoughtful, meaningful best.

4. Humana: Winning at interviewing and onboarding

You’d expect a major U.S. health and wellbeing company to be people-focused. Two key elements of Humana’s candidate experience certainly are.

First, adopting video and automated telephone interviews has aided candidates as much as recruiters. Given time to plan and record responses at their leisure, applicants are far more likely to rate the interview experience as positive. Better still, the system’s efficiency means applicants learn their fate significantly faster. Without even being in the same room as an interviewer, candidates are more engaged in the process.

Meanwhile, as an active recruiter from the U.S. military, Humana goes to great lengths to help veterans transition to corporate life. Innovative onboarding initiatives include relocation concierge services, setting up accommodation for new hires ahead of their start date.

5. Airbnb: Winning at candidate perspective

Last but not least, when Airbnb realised the chasm between its growth trajectory and arcane hiring practices, the company came up with a leftfield way to reinvent its candidate journey. The recruiting team storyboarded the experience end to end, on a wall, with post-its, to earn deeper insights into candidates’ needs, motivations and pain points at each stage.

As people who know a thing or two about gaining richer insights from delving deeper, we couldn’t help but love this slice of fresh thinking.

Conclusion

No employer serious about hiring great talent can afford to ignore the value of candidate experience. Fortunately, few do. But there are some companies taking candidate engagement to another level and reaping the rewards for doing so. We hope these stories help inspire you to join their ranks.

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

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Why?

Because candidates talk… and disgruntled candidates talk loudest. When they have a bad experience, not only are they unlikely to reapply to you in future, but they’ll also share it with their network. That’s bad news for your employer brand (and your consumer brand if they use your products or services).

If your candidate experience isn’t one of your top priorities, you’re not alone. Few recruiters get it absolutely right* and most companies stumble over the same few hurdles.

Are you one of them? If you’re making any of these four mistakes, it’s time to give more thought to how you’re treating your candidates – and what they’re saying about you in return.

1. Not being clear and up front

Recruiters are rarely outright dishonest when hiring (scroll to the end of this post for one particularly egregious example). But the process can easily be clouded by uncertainty and evasion.

If a candidate doesn’t know where they stand, or what to expect next, or who’s interviewing them, or how many they’re up against, or how close they are to a final decision, it’s confusing. And needlessly so. It’s a simple courtesy to provide a broad outline and timeline for the process, then update applicants on their progress, right up to the point when they’re no longer being considered.

We’re firm believers in honest feedback for unsuccessful candidates too. Take time to help someone in their professional journey, even when your company isn’t the next destination, and you leave them feeling valued, respected and open to future conversations.

2. Not following up

‘Not following up’ is the polite term. ‘Ignoring’ puts it more bluntly, and it’s always a horrible feeling.

Never forget that recruiting is only a one-to-many process from your perspective. Most job applications are submitted with great care and high hopes. At this first stage an automated reply is the very least they can expect – yet only a statistical minority of applicants receive one.

As candidates progress, contact should increase. We recommend following up even if you have nothing to report, particularly if you’ve promised to. You might consider adding a follow-up pool in your ATS, where applicants sit until contacted. And why not ask them how they’d like you to keep in touch – phone, text, email or even social?

3. Thinking like a recruiter

The last paragraph leads us to another key mistake: not considering what candidates actually go through to get the job. With your recruiter hat on, you see your hiring requirements and you want to find the candidate that fits them best. But how can you be sure that your process is best equipped to lead to that candidate if you don’t see it through their eyes?

And what about the dozens, maybe hundreds of applicants who fall by the wayside? How are they left feeling about the experience?

Try to understand – and even better, design – your process from an applicant’s point of view. Here’s where it’s your turn to ask candidates for honest feedback. Take it on board and keep tweaking.

4. Engaging too many candidates

Good rule of thumb: the more personally engaged a candidate feels, the better their experience will be. You simply don’t have time to personally engage everyone… so be ruthless in your candidate selection, not your candidate engagement!

Spreading yourself too thin between too many candidates is precisely when you run into the other problems we’ve discussed. And for what? The outside chance that a maybe candidate transforms themselves into the perfect hire at interview? Of course it’s a possibility, but almost certainly to the detriment of your overall candidate experience.

Now contrast that with richer, personalised conversations with fewer, better candidates. Even the unsuccessful ones will leave the process feeling good about your company… and keen to reconnect in the future.

If you see anything familiar in our quartet of common mistakes, we highly recommend taking steps to improve your candidate experience. Companies that do, like Hootsuite, are reaping the reputational benefits that come with a distinctively brilliant candidate experience. It’s a genuinely effective way to distance yourself from your competitors – and be talked about for all the right reasons.

One example of a company getting it unspeakably wrong: a start-up that had found a great candidate for a senior sales opening. At the latter stages of the process, they asked him to use his contacts to secure a sales meeting with a company his existing employer was also targeting. So a straight choice between his current employer and his prospective one. Things were going so well with the start-up that he set up the meeting… at which point the phone went dead on the job. He never heard from them again. How many people do you think he’s told that story to over the years?

Those in the know, share. If you think your network would find inspiration in this post, we’ve made it really easy for you to tell them using the LinkedIn Share button below.

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