What Candidate Experience Platforms Really Are

Adrian Dixon

January 22, 2019

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Is a candidate experience platform really a thing?

Indeed, it’s becoming one. Increasingly in the HR Tech and Human Capital Management System market, you’re seeing companies design candidate experience platforms, which are recruiting solutions with a focus on the candidate’s steps foremost in mind.

To understand this market shift, we need to unpack a few ideas first. First: let’s define candidate experience.

What is candidate experience?

The basic idea is treating any job applicant (candidate) to your company in a respectful, transparent manner. This includes:

  • Letting them know where their application stands
  • Communicating with them and answering questions about the process
  • If they don’t get the job, offering some degree of context or explanation
  • Not spamming them with product/service emails just because they’re in the database as a candidate
  • Showing up for interviews and other appointments during the process

All of the buzz surrounding the idea of “ghosting” in the hiring process is the opposite of candidate experience. Candidate experience is about treating all candidates with a degree of respect, context, and clear communication.

Why is this important?

Human decency aside, it’s important for your brand. You can spend millions on branding campaigns, but if you treat candidates like trash, they will tell their friends and colleagues about your company in a negative way. That impacts your brand in terms of selling. You should care because you want to make sure everyone that touches your brand in any way speaks of it positively while out in the broader work environment.

So what does a candidate experience platform look like, then?

It’s designed to alleviate some of the traditional pain points with candidate experience. That means:

  • It makes it easier for candidates to see where they stand in the process.
  • Instead of top-of-funnel logistics like interview scheduling being done in a confusing back-and-forth series of emails, they’re done with automation.
  • FAQ-style questions and initial phone screens can be handled by chatbots.
  • Communication and transparency are streamlined.
  • When a good-fit candidate is rejected, they go back into a “rediscovery” bucket where they can be the first contacted about similar openings in the future.

Did we need a category of platform for treating candidates with respect?

We shouldn’t need to, no. But the real answer is yes, because it helps busy decision-makers understand what a product does faster. If someone can look at two pieces of tech and say “That one does candidate experience” (which relates to the hiring process) and “That one does employee engagement (which relates to employees once they are hired and part of the team), it becomes easier to make purchase decisions. That’s why categories exist in any industry.

Is Ideal a candidate experience platform?

Very much so. Do we always brand that way? No. But do we provide solutions to make the candidate experience better, make sure your Glassdoor ratings don’t tank, and make sure the market views you as a great place to interact with as an employer? Absolutely.

Above all else, consider this: just think about the rediscovery feature and sheer math/human psychology. You have an open job. 100 people apply. 20 are qualified. 1 gets it. Now you have 19 qualified people who didn’t get it. Well, when a similar job opens, reach out to those 19 first and see where they’re at career-wise. This saves money on sourcing and events, and it is a great example of candidate experience. Candidates are used to hearing “We’ll keep your resume on file!” with no follow-up. But now, because of a tech tool, it actually means something! And you get better candidates at less cost. That’s the right system. That’s what a candidate experience platform should be doing. And that’s among the features we’re most proud of here.