As it becomes increasingly challenging to recruit talent, investing in a high touch candidate experience can give you a competitive edge as well as positively impact your employment brand.

What is a high touch candidate experience? Put simply, it’s great customer service. I learned the value of great customer service from my first job as a Sales Associate at Nordstrom (no better place to learn)! It’s something that I have been passionate about ever since, and that I’ve carried with me through my years building teams at Hulu, Vessel and now at Upfront working with our portfolio.

A company has three main customers: your users and buyers, your internal team members and your potential new hires. I firmly believe that a company's success lies in the ability to attract, recruit and retain a high quality team. But the majority of companies devote most of their time, budget and resourcing to the consumer/user experience and neglect their hiring experiences. I'm baffled that so few companies put effort into this critical process! To give companies an edge in this effort, I’ve outlined an overview of the candidate journey and some commonly overlooked but important tactics.

Candidate Engagement

First impressions are everything. When you initially reach out, don’t be that person who spams 100 candidates on LinkedIn with the same generic message. Take time to read a candidate's profile, truly understand their background and assess their level of experience. Craft a personalized, thoughtful message illustrating that you’ve reviewed their background, reference something specific and unique about them, share proper detail about your company and the role, and proactively propose some days/times to connect on the opportunity. Be brief, be informative and make it easy for them to respond to your message.

Interview Process

So, great - you’ve piqued the candidate’s interest. Don’t assume that they are ready to launch straight into your interview process and jump through all of your hoops. Remember, it’s a two-way street and an opportunity to show candidates why you’re an amazing company to work for. Here are a couple of common mistakes I see during the interview process:

Forget to keep the sales hat on

Companies forget that candidates have a lot of choices these days - it's common for the best candidates to have multiple, compelling offers at the end of a process. So the fit needs to be mutual! Once a candidate has engaged with your company, sometimes companies go straight into evaluation mode, rushing to test skills. Remember to sell your mission, your culture, the opportunity and the team throughout the entire process. Put your best foot forward in every interaction and don't expect candidates to do all the work.

Lack of organization

This is a pet peeve of mine that I see all the time. Companies develop bad habits like:

• Engaging the candidate and then going quiet, so they're chasing YOU down to get a meeting or call confirmed
• Not sending a proper pre-meeting email that includes basic things like parking, directions for your office, and the names and backgrounds of the people they will be meeting with
• Allowing onsite interviews to run long with poor “handoffs” between the interview sessions
• Leaving candidates unattended in a room for a long time, or not offering break periods, snacks and drinks through long meeting days

You would never treat the buyer of a potentially big contract this way. Don't treat candidates this way either.

Delivering the Feedback

How you decline a candidate is just as important as how you close a great hire. As in customer service, sometimes you can’t solve a problem, but you can empathize and make sure they leave feeling as good as possible. You want to avoid someone telling their network how terrible the process was or writing a negative Glassdoor review. Not getting the job is one thing but a bad process can be worse. 56% of applicants who had a positive experience with a company would consider employment again with the company.

If you determine that the candidate is not moving on after the onsite interview, don’t send an impersonal, generic email saying “they are not a fit”. A candidate took the time to get to you know you and the company, so the least you can do is give them a call to share your decision to not move forward, to thank them for their time and to ask them for their feedback on their experience. And I can't tell you how many people have told me that nobody had ever followed up with them in a hiring process, leaving them to wonder what happened. Don't ghost your candidates!

Making the Hire

OK, you’ve identified your top candidate for the role and it's time to make the sale! Think of the extra effort you go to for any big customer - how does that translate to your hiring process? How do you convey your enthusiasm, differentiation, and experience so she knows that you’re the company for her? Roll out the red carpet, of course!

This is an awesome opportunity to show off your team and culture. At my last startup, we wanted to hire a product designer who was being recruited by multiple companies. We invited her to come back and have a casual lunch with the team, and we gave her a gift with things she mentioned liking through our process of getting to know her, along with a handwritten card from the team. Each person shared what they thought was unique about her and why they thought she’d be an amazing addition. Despite other offers, she ultimately joined our team because she felt more connected with the team and culture. These little gestures go a long way with candidates and even if they don’t join, they leave with a very positive experience and insight into your culture that they will share with their network.

In closing, the elements of a great candidate experience are simple. The magic sauce is your ability to execute, be consistent throughout and weave in elements of your own unique culture. Regardless of the size or stage of a company, it’s critical to make candidate experience the focus of your recruitment process. I believe the founder/CEO of a company should be the biggest advocate and should hire an in house recruiter earlier than later to own the candidate experience. The sooner you create a process, the easier it is for it to become a scalable and seamless part of your culture.