Career

  • Career

    The Candidate Experience is vital to your brand! Are you measuring it?

    The candidate experience: using NPS for recruitment applicants

    By Dominique Pomario and Carole Cooper

    A few years ago we completed a Mini MBA in Marketing with Mark Ritson, which proved to be one of the most valuable courses we’ve done in recent years.

    One of the key takeaways during our time spent immersed in the Mini Marketing MBA was learning more about Net Promoter Scores (NPS). Net Promoter Scores are typically used as a customer satisfaction benchmark that measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business or services to a friend. It’s a measurement tool that companies use to evaluate and improve customer loyalty.

    At the same time we were dealing with the challenge of how to improve the candidate experience and better protect the employer brand of a large retailer during the recruitment process, so, we took our new found and in-depth understanding of NPS to overhaul the system.

    Research showed that NPS hadn’t really caught on as a candidate experience tool as yet but we had seen that Citrix in the US had been using it for a few years with some great results.

    As a major Australian retailer, this employer received a large number of job applications for various roles each month, and as a result, the recruitment team had to regularly reject a large number of candidates.

    With an acute awareness that candidates were also either existing or potential retail customers, it became clear that more needed to be done to protect the employer brand as en employter of choice but also its consumer-facing brand.

    In order to truly understand how candidates felt about their recruitment experience with the aim to improve it, we implemented an NPS system to easily translate feedback across the candidate experience.

    As a process of continual improvement, NPS scoring enabled the recruitment team to make informed decisions to better protect both its employer and consumer brands.

    Overall response rates were good, with 20 – 25% of candidates who were sent the email taking the survey. Overwhelmingly, candidates were also very willing to provide written feedback and answer three optional questions which proved invaluable in determining the different opportunities for improvement within the various stages of the recruitment process, as well as within the recruitment teams.

    To establish where the biggest opportunities were to improve on the NPS score, the team explored the optional commentary to identify two key – albeit glaringly obvious – areas for improvement:

    1.  email communication when rejecting candidates – what they actually wanted was an opportunity for personal feedback and less words spent trying to conciliate them;

    2. the phone interview experience for candidates was inconsistent.

    As a result of the initial first month in trial, we were able to overhaul all communication templates to really simplify the message and provide an opportunity for candidates to receive personal feedback if they desired.

    Similarly, thanks to the comments received, it was determined that recruiters were conducting too many phone interviews in a day and in many instances, it was fatigue that was affecting how they were dealing with candidates.  With some simple adjustments to workflow and expectations to manage the volume of phone interviews, as well as the time between them, the team was able to improve on results within a short 3 month period (moving up -41 NPS points to a score of -25).

    With the expectation of continuous improvement, this large retailer set its sights on achieving a positive NPS within 18 months  In June 2019, 19 months after the initial launch they received an NPS score of +8.

    Today, NPS is an embedded program within the recruitment team’s processes and helps to better control the perception of its employer brand to ensure a positive experience for all those who engage.

    Need some help with your people and culture practices? Find out exactly how we can help you here.

  • Career

    Practical career advice in a saturated jobs market

    COVID-19 has had a significant impact on all of us in many ways, from our physical and mental health to our jobs and freedom to travel.  In what has been such an uncertain landscape, redundancies, role changes and terminations have become a very common occurrence for many of us. In a job market where so many people are looking for a job, here is some practical career advice so you can survive and stand out.

    We’re not often conditioned to expect or anticipate the job market to be brutal, but absolutely it can be a brutal experience for many. After a few months, rejections and no responses can start to breed more uncertainty, fear and doubt in yourself. Couple this with your worries about finances, your family and mounting bills and it’s easy to see how it can land you in a very dark place.

    What can you do to get through this tumultuous time?

    Seek passion – Think of the job market as your opportunity to seek something you are truly passionate about. That’s the first, and best, place to start.

    Have a thirst for learning – Read more, do some short courses to upskill in areas you’re lacking, listen to topical podcasts, and engage with Ted Talks.  There are so many ways you can educate yourself and develop your thirst for learning. Recruiters can always spot someone who is well-read, open to different or new perspectives and is constantly learning.

    Be curious and ask lots of questions – Take yourself out of your comfort zone to grab new opportunities and give it a go. You never know where it could take you.  Now is the time to make bold moves in the job market.

    Always do what you say you will do – Follow through is so important. If you finish your interview by telling the recruiter you’ll contact them early next week to follow up on the role, then do exactly that.

    Check your personal brand – In the job market, you’re selling your personal brand so make sure you know exactly who you are, what you stand for and what you could bring to the business.

    Build genuine relationships – An easy way to handle the “rejection” of an interview is to look at it as another connection made. It might not have resulted in a job right now, but you’ve hopefully made a good impression and you never know where the relationship might lead. Maintaining good relationships in business can open many doors in the future.

    Persevere, don’t give up – Like many aspects of life, in the job market you just have to keep going. Reflect on each interview to understand where you think it might have gone wrong and seek feedback from the interview panel whenever possible. Position each set back as a positive learning experience and you’ll get better with each one.

    While these tips are great to help you navigate the job market, it is all the more beneficial to also have a personal network of friends and family to lean on, as well as a positive and optimistic outlook. Try to surround yourself with like-minded people and create your own support network for the tough days. Mentally, change your thought process to reflect on each experience in a positive light (it’s all a learning experience after all so you’ll come out the other side stronger). Set goals, think positive and remember…the job market is a numbers game so roll the dice and eventually you’ll get a winning hand.