The Importance of the Candidate Experience

Personalisation can make or break a candidate experience. Don’t just take our word for it. Today’s candidates expect way more than just a job spec and a callback. It’s all about an experience that feels human, intentional and tailored to them. As recruiters competing for top talent in a crowded market, the candidate experience could be your biggest differentiator.

We’re all about helping agencies optimise their tech stacks to improve ROI and increase efficiency, but the ultimate goal is a smoother, smarter, more reliable personal experience. That’s for both your team and your candidates.

So what does a great candidate experience look like, and how can personalisation make or break it?

Don’t Overlook the Importance of The Candidate Experience

Beyond the immediately obvious of happy candidates becoming successful placements, there’s many reasons why a strong candidate experience leads to better things.

• Higher engagement and response rates

• Faster time-to-hire and time-to-fill

• Better reviews and referrals

• Increased trust in your brand

• Improved retention

On the other hand, giving candidates a clunky process, slow communication or an entirely generic approach can damage your reputation and even put off great people. In extreme circumstances, it can even put off candidates from using your agency altogether.

In fact, 78% of candidates say the overall candidate experience they receive is an indicator of how a company values its people. There’s a lot of competition on the market, but having a streamlined process highlights your people-first culture, which could persuade candidates to accept your job offers.

Ultimately, providing a great candidate experience has a significant impact on your ability to attract and retain top talent. A streamlined process powered by tools like Bullhorn supports efficient recruiting while enhancing the candidate experience.

With better experiences comes increased likelihood that candidates will engage with your company. They might even be interested in learning about your culture and values, which can then increase engagement and retention rates. This might also lead to more referrals.

Where The Experience Breaks Down

Candidate experience spans every touchpoint, right from the very first interaction on LinkedIn to the final onboarding email and subsequent catch ups. The cracks can show up in small ways that build over time.

Does your process match the candidate’s expectations? Have you been updating them with realistic timelines? Has there been duplicate comms or misaligned messaging?

Linked with this is having a cold, impersonal outreach. Why would anyone consider working with you if your messaging isn’t targeted or has any warmth? A quarter of candidates will actively discourage anyone from applying to you if they had a bad experience, so don’t close yourself off.

If you’ve also bought tech that’s harder to use than it should be, then it’s time to go back to the basics. The good news is, in all these scenarios, it’s not an impossible process to fix. The cure? Better personalisation and cleaner workflows. If done right, recruitment automation improves candidate engagement and reduces drop-offs by maintaining consistent, timely and relevant communication.

The Key to Personalisation

Let’s get one important detail out the way first: personalisation doesn’t just mean using a candidate’s name. In the early days, adding a first name to a template was all well and good, but today’s candidates are more discerning that than. They’re after that tailored, human experience. And spotting a generic template is all too easy.

The candidate wants to feel seen, heard and understood throughout the entire recruitment process. So you need to match that expectation - or better yet, exceed it.

Personalisation doesn’t have to mean more manual effort. With smart recruitment process automation, you can tailor experiences at scale. Here’s how you bring the journey to life.

Segment Your Candidates Properly

You shouldn’t treat every candidate the exact same. This generic approach could be doing a lot of harm to your recruitment agency. Your CRM and automation tools are the key to fixing this. With the right Bullhorn automation workflow, you can segment candidates by role type, seniority, or location - and ensure they receive the right messages at the right time.

This doesn’t mean that everything needs to be done manually. By segmenting your candidates this way, you’ll be able to create messaging that speaks to the stage of their journey and resonates with them.

Do Your Homework

Candidates will be impressed with their experience if they feel you’ve taken the time to listen to what they’ve already told you. This includes mentioning relevant experience, companies or skills. What have they told you in previous conversations? These little details will make them feel like more than just a number.

The more data you have about candidates, the more personalised you can make their experience with your recruitment agency.

Automate Human Responses

We’ve already established that generic automations can break a candidate’s experience. However, smart automated candidate engagement can speed up the personalisation process without things feeling robotic. Automate drip campaigns, scheduled check-ins and status updates to keep your workload manageable. 

Just make sure that the content and tone still feel bespoke. If the context of your automation is off, it could have the opposite effect.

Communicate Their Way

Some candidates don’t have the time for a phone call when you’re free, while others prefer a lengthy WhatsApp conversation instead of email back-and-forth. What’s key is to communicate with the candidate in a way that they prefer. Setting up your tech right can help with this.

Track The Data

Even after you’ve set up your automations, done your homework and are contacting your candidates to the letter, you still need to monitor the process to understand how it’s working. You can only improve if you have the data to support your efforts.

Use tools like the Bullhorn Analytics dashboard to track open rates, drop-off points, and engagement metrics in real-time. The main element to personalisation is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, so it should evolve over time based on the data you get back from your candidates. Customising Bullhorn workflows to fit your recruitment style allows for personalisation that doesn’t compromise efficiency or consistency.

Want more tips for Bullhorn ATS and automation workflows that put your candidate first? Discover our full list of blogs.