Aaradhya was a Sales manager in a
very large manufacturing organization for the past 3 years. She was happy with
her job and was not looking out actively for a change till she got an
opportunity from one of the ‘Great Places to Work’ organizations in the FMCG
industry. She was all excited as the recruitment consultant discussed the
opportunity with her and spent the whole weekend preparing for her interview.
Finally the day of her first interview arrived. The interview was scheduled for
10AM and she planned to return to work by 2PM. However to her surprise, the
process did not begin before 1PM, as the hiring manager was attending an
important call. She ignored the delay but was worrying about making it in time
to her office. The interview went well and she got through to the next
round.
More
than a month passed and she did not hear anything either from the consultant or
the internal HR. She contacted the consultant and learnt that he had not heard
anything from the HR on the next steps. Naturally, she felt hurt and angry but
still hoped for some positive news. She entertained her nervous energy by
surfing randomly on the internet about the organization when she landed on a
companies’ reviews site which contained a database of employees’/ interviewing
candidates’ reviews about their organization. As she moved on to the reviews
from the interviewing candidates she was aghast to learn about the experiences
of the candidates. Majority of candidates who were not selected reported a very
negative experience. There was a case when the candidate was informed about
getting selected but later he never heard back again from the organization. As
she read more and more she turned increasingly negative towards the
organization.
A
lot of organizations fail to realize this missing link to employer branding.
How amazing it would be if organizations not only try to impress their
employees but also the interviewing candidates with their professional
behaviour and sound processes.
A
lot of organizations today have carved out a Strategic HR Advisor role
responsible for working on transformation projects, process improvements and
change management. Such role holders or any HR Process expert could redesign
their selection process to cater to this need.
Roadmap
for creating a good candidate experience
Assess
the Current State: Identify stakeholders for
process redesign. This would involve few members from the Talent Acquisition
team and few hiring managers / managers responsible for conducting interviews.
This could also involve someone from the HRIS team. Define the role of each
stakeholder. RACI framework usually helps in this. Clarify the purpose and
expectations to all the stakeholders and map the current interviewing process
along with the stakeholders. Identify disconnects in the current process and
possible reasons behind them which could be leading to a poor candidate
experience. This is an important step and could throw light on key issues such
as lack of preparation of interviewers before conducting interviews, failure on
part of Talent Acquisition team to keep the candidate updated with next steps
or to share the bad news, lack of an automated process to keep the candidate
informed. Prioritize the key disconnects and identify solution for each. While
the key aim is to improve candidate experience, one must identify the extent of
redesign required in the selection process, just in case there are some more
sub-process improvements which could be looked at simultaneously.
Benchmark
best practices: The Strategic HR Advisor or the
Process expert should also benchmark with the market on best practices for
creating a good candidate experience. This should be done before conducting the
workshop with stakeholders. Taking cue from appreciative inquiry, the Process
expert could also discuss further possibilities of improving candidate
experience with the stakeholders.
Redesign
the process: Based on the impact, available
resources and other constraints identify the key changes in the existing
process and document the new process. Creating a guideline checklist could also
help. Do a quick validation with key stakeholders and communicate the new
process to all key stakeholders.
Monitor
effectiveness: Feedback from candidates who
accept the offer on the interviewing experience, Glassdoor reviews could be
used as an indicator to gauge the effectiveness of the process. Take necessary
steps based on the feedback received.
The
article was originally published in People Matters .
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