Candidate experience: how candidates experience your recruitment process

In this blog, you’ll learn what candidate experience is, how it differs from the candidate journey and which phases it covers. In short: candidate experience is how a candidate experiences your entire recruitment process, from the first job ad to beyond their first day at work.

What is candidate experience?

Candidate experience is the sum of every impression a candidate forms in their contact with your organisation. From the first vacancy they see to the moment they start, or hear they haven’t made it through. It is one of the topics within recruitment experience: the experience of everyone involved in recruitment.

It’s not only about what you do, but about how it comes across. A quick reply feels like attention. A week of silence feels like indifference, even when there’s simply a lot of internal discussion going on.

Candidate experience is not the same as the candidate journey. The candidate journey describes the route: which steps a candidate takes and through which channels. Candidate experience is about what they experience at each step. You can have a tightly organised route and still offer a mediocre experience. Nor is it a standalone marketing project. Everyone who has contact with candidates helps shape it.

Candidate experience consists of five phases:

• Orientation and attraction: the first impression, before anyone applies.
• Applying: how easy it is to respond.
• Selection and interviews: how you communicate and how the interviews go.
• Offer or rejection: how you deliver the decision, including when it’s a no.
• Onboarding and aftercare: what happens after the decision, also for rejected candidates.

The 5 phases of candidate experience in the recruitment process

The recruitment process follows a set order, and in each phase the candidate forms an opinion. Here’s what matters in each one.

1. Orientation and attraction

The experience starts before anyone applies. A candidate reads your job ad, looks at your website and maybe checks LinkedIn to see what your employees share. Clarity counts most here. What does the role involve, what can someone expect and does the tone match who you are? A vague job ad doesn’t just attract fewer people. It attracts the wrong ones.

2. Applying

This is the moment interest turns into action. How easy is it to respond? Does a candidate have to upload their CV and then type in the same details again? Does it work on mobile? Every extra field is a reason to drop out. Right after hitting send, a candidate expects a confirmation, ideally with an idea of what happens next.

3. Selection and interviews

In the selection phase, it’s all about communication. A candidate wants to know where they stand. How many rounds are there, who will they speak to and when will they hear back? The interviews themselves count too. A well-prepared recruiter who takes the candidate seriously makes a bigger impression than a glossy brochure. For agencies, there’s an extra layer: the candidate also notices how the collaboration with the client is going, even though they can’t see it themselves.

4. Offer or rejection

The end of the selection is a decision point, for both sides. A clear offer without unnecessary delay builds trust. But this phase is just as much about rejecting. Most candidates hear no in the end. How you deliver that message largely shapes their experience. And with it, whether they’ll apply again later, and what they tell others about you.

5. Onboarding and aftercare

A signature doesn’t end the experience. The period between signing and the first working day is fragile: anyone who hears nothing for weeks starts to doubt. In secondment and temporary staffing, this phase even continues throughout the placement. And rejected candidates fall under aftercare too. Someone who stays in your talent pool and occasionally hears something relevant is already one step ahead when the next vacancy comes up.

Where candidate experience usually goes wrong

Interestingly, things rarely go wrong within a phase. They go wrong between phases. An application comes in, but nobody picks it up straight away. An interview has taken place, but the feedback is waiting for someone who’s on holiday. A candidate is turned down for one vacancy, while a colleague at another branch could have used them well.

That’s not a matter of unwillingness. In organisations with multiple teams, branches and ways of working, information often sits in different places. As a result, nobody sees the full picture of the candidate. The candidate does notice: they tell their story twice, or hear nothing at all.

Three signs that the transitions in your recruitment process need attention:

• Candidates drop out between application and first contact. The interest was there, but the response came too late.
• Candidates ask for an update themselves. That means they don’t know where they stand.
• Recruiters each work in their own way. The experience then depends on who the candidate happens to deal with.

Candidate experience is teamwork

Good candidate experience isn’t a campaign or a standalone tool. It’s the result of a process that works, from start to finish.

Marketing and recruitment share responsibility for it. Marketing largely shapes the first impression in the orientation phase. Recruitment takes over as soon as a candidate responds. If that handover falters, the candidate is the first to notice.

For recruitment managers, this is a concrete task. Map the candidate journey from start to finish and check who is responsible in each phase. Agree on how quickly you respond, how you reject and who keeps the candidate informed. That way, the experience no longer depends on who happens to have time.

Technology helps, as long as it gives recruiters room rather than extra work. Automatic confirmations, clear statuses and one place for all candidate information tie up loose ends. The time that frees up goes to personal contact. We believe that’s exactly what technology is for.

Where do you start?

You don’t have to tackle everything at once. The biggest gains usually aren’t in a single phase, but in the transitions between them. That’s the best place to start.

Pick one transition, for example from application to first contact, and look at it through a candidate’s eyes. What do they see, what do they hear and how long do they wait? That one exercise often tells you more than an extensive survey.

Want to read more about improving the experience of candidates, recruiters and clients? Discover more about recruitment experience in our knowledge base.