Candidate Experience 101: Why It Matters and How to Improve Yours

The Complete Guide to Candidate Experience: Statistics, Strategies, and ROI

In today's competitive talent market, the way you treat candidates during the hiring process can make or break your ability to attract top talent. A positive candidate experience is a critical factor that directly impacts your ability to fill positions with quality candidates, generate positive word of mouth, protect your employer brand, and maintain a healthy bottom line.

What Is Candidate Experience?

Candidate experience encompasses every interaction a job seeker has with your organization throughout the recruiting process, from the moment they first encounter your brand to the point of hire or rejection. This journey typically includes discovering your job posting, navigating your application process, communicating with recruiters, participating in interviews, and receiving feedback about their candidacy.

Think of it as the recruitment equivalent of customer experience. Just as a poor shopping experience can drive customers to competitors, a negative hiring experience can send top talent pursuing opportunities with your competitors (and potentially damage your reputation in the process.)

The Current State of Candidate Experience: A Reality Check

Let's be honest: most candidate experiences are falling short of expectations. Recent research paints a sobering picture of how job seekers perceive today's hiring processes.

According to ERE's 2023 Benchmark Research Report, only 26% of North American job seekers report having a great candidate experience. Even more concerning, more than one in 10 candidates (13%) had such a terrible experience that they're less likely to apply again, refer others, maintain brand affinity, or make purchases from the company if it's a consumer-facing business.

The problem has actually been getting worse, not better. In their 2024 report, ERE found that candidate contentment has continued to decline sharply, while candidate resentment increased everywhere in 2024. In North America, the resentment rate reached 14%, with Technology and Finance & Insurance industries seeing rates as high as 25%.).

Why Candidate Experience Matters: The Business Impact

Impact on Offer Acceptance

A positive candidate experience directly influences whether top candidates will say "yes" to your job offers. In a 2024 report, Gallup found that among employees hired in the last year, two in three reported that the candidate experience they had with their current company was “exceptional” (27%) or “very good” (39%).

The Cost of Poor Candidate Experience

When candidates have negative experiences, they don't suffer in silence. Instead, candidates are likely to share their bad experiences online or with someone directly. In the age of Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and social media, word spreads quickly.

The financial implications are equally serious. According to Harvard Business Review, organizations with poor employer brands pay 10% higher salaries on average to compensate for their negative reputation.

The Employer Brand Connection

Your candidate experience is inseparable from your employer brand. Glassdoor research shows that 75% of job seekers consider an employer's brand before applying. On the flip side, negative reviews have serious consequences. Often, job seekers won't apply if they see negative reviews about a company, and many candidates will abandon the application process after reading negative feedback about a business.

The Top Candidate Experience Pain Points

Understanding what frustrates candidates is the first step toward improvement. Here are the most common complaints:

Communication Breakdowns

Poor communication consistently ranks as one of the biggest issues in the hiring process.

The silence is particularly deafening after interviews. When candidates are left without any communication even after completing interviews, this lack of follow-up damages both candidate experience and employer reputation.

Lengthy and Complex Application Processes

Job applications that require excessive time and information drive candidates away. For high-demand professionals who may be applying to multiple positions, an unwieldy or lengthy time investment becomes prohibitive.

Negative Interview Experiences

The interview stage is make-or-break for candidate experience. Negative interactions during interviews will often cause candidates to decline offers.

Interview quality matters significantly. When an interviewer asks inappropriate questions, is late, has a poor attitude, or causes candidates to have a negative interaction in any way, candidates are less likely to want move forward with the hiring process. This is which AI voice agents built specifically for recruiting (like Maya by Curately) are such an important part of a modern recruitment journey. When initial screening is handled by an AI voice agent, the experience is consistent across applicants, and the candidates’ time is respected with a more efficient process, while still providing detailed objective information to the human recruitment team.

Misaligned Expectations

When candidates finally receive offers, misalignment on key factors like pay, hours, areas of responsibility, time off, or work-life balance often leads to rejection. Therefore, it’s critical to maintain a sufficient level of transparency earlier in the process.

How to Improve Your Candidate Experience

Now that we understand the stakes and the pain points, let's explore practical strategies for creating a candidate experience that attracts and retains top talent.

1. Communicate Early, Often, and Transparently

Set clear expectations from the beginning about what candidates can expect, including timeline, next steps, and the overall hiring process. Then follow through consistently.

Best practices for communication:

• Send automated acknowledgment emails immediately upon application receipt

• Provide realistic timelines for each stage of the process

• Keep candidates updated even when there's no news (a "we're still reviewing applications" message is better than silence)

• Personalize communications whenever possible

• When rejecting candidates, provide constructive feedback when feasible

• Make it easy for candidates to reach out with questions

2. Streamline Your Application Process

Audit your application process from a candidate's perspective. Ask yourself:

• Can this be completed on a mobile device?

• Are we asking for information we truly need at this stage?

• Have we eliminated redundant questions?

• Is the process intuitive and user-friendly?

Consider implementing:

• One-click and mobile apply options (Like Curately’s One Tap Apply)

• Resume parsing technology to reduce manual data entry

• Progress indicators so candidates know how much time the application will take

• The ability to save and return to applications

3. Leverage Technology Thoughtfully

Technology should enhance, not replace, the human elements of recruiting. Use tools to:

• Automate status updates and scheduling

• Provide self-service access to application status

• Conduct initial phone screens with AI voice agents

• Enable video interviewing for geographically dispersed candidates

• Track and measure candidate experience metrics

4. Build and Maintain Your Employer Brand

Your employer brand is shaped by every candidate interaction, not just those who receive offers. To strengthen your brand:

• Actively manage your presence on Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and other platforms where candidates research employers

• Respond to reviews professionally and thoughtfully

• Share authentic employee stories and testimonials

• Be transparent about your culture, values, and what it's really like to work at your company

• Ensure your career site accurately reflects your employee value proposition

5. Create Feedback Loops

You can't improve what you don't measure. Implement systems to:

• Survey candidates at various stages of the hiring process

• Track metrics like time-to-hire, offer acceptance rate, and candidate satisfaction scores

• Monitor your employer brand rating on review sites

• Conduct exit interviews with candidates who withdrew from your process

• Regularly review and act on the feedback you receive

6. Extend the Positive Experience to All Candidates

It's tempting to focus resources on finalists and new hires, but remember that every candidate is a potential employee, customer, or referral source. Even rejected candidates should feel valued and respected. And who knows, someone in their network may be a perfect fit for the role.

Best practices for all candidates:

• Thank them for their time and interest

• Provide closure, don't leave them wondering about their status

• When possible, offer feedback that helps them in their job search

• Encourage them to apply for future roles that might be a better fit

• Treat them as you would want to be treated if roles were reversed

Measuring Success

To track the effectiveness of your candidate experience improvements, monitor these key metrics:

Quantitative Metrics:

• Application completion rate

• Time-to-hire

• Offer acceptance rate

• Candidate drop-off rate at each stage

• Cost-per-hire

• Source of hire

• Employee referral rate

Qualitative Metrics:

• Candidate satisfaction surveys

• Net Promoter Score (NPS) for candidates

• Glassdoor and other review site ratings

• Interview feedback

• Exit interview insights from candidates who withdrew

The Bottom Line

Candidate experience is a business imperative. Your next great hire is out there, evaluating you just as carefully as you'll evaluate them. Make sure the experience you're offering is one that attracts, rather than repels, the talent you need to succeed.

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