Blog: The candidate experience as a competitive advantage – go compare.

For better or worse, we’re always comparing. And such comparisons are so much easier to make today. We want to know what our neighbours paid for their house.

Was it more or less than we stumped out? Not a problem, easily done.

We want to know where our friends are staying on holiday? Is their hotel, weather, food, views better than our own? A simple check on the social media of our choice and we know.

And the likes of Instagram make it all too easy to understand how we dress, how we look, how we’re ageing in comparison to those around us. 

One of the major technological advances over the last ten years has been consumer comparison sites. If we want to compare mortgage rates, hotel prices, flight availability, insurance deals, healthcare outcomes, grocery prices, we’re only a couple of clicks away. We inhabit today a far more transparent world. The truth is out there like never before. There’s rarely a shortage of relevant stats, metrics and tables.

We know how our sports team is faring, how local schools are doing, and how well our pension is performing. Not so much in absolute terms, but particularly in comparison to their respective peer groups.

In theory, it has never been easier to make an informed, insightful choice. And if sometimes, sadly, we’re usually stuck with our football team, that’s not the case with our choice of insurance company, bank, holiday destination or car. 

Nor, for that matter, our employer. 

How often do organisations compare their candidate offering with the market? 

How often do they create topical levels of understanding about their applicant journey and how it might stack up alongside those offered by their industry or locational peers?

If I’m a candidate, I’m likely to be considering not just one new employer but a handful. And I’ll definitely have some key considerations and criteria in mind when I come to compare like with like. I’ll want to know about salary levels and respective packages. I’ll want to know how those different organisations are performing. I’ll want to understand some practical things around location and commute.

Along with such important considerations, two hugely interlinked elements will form a key part of my decision-making process. The image, reputation or brand of those employers. And the sort of candidate experience I come across. Interlinked, because the experience I come across as a candidate will significantly influence that organisation’s employer brand or reputation. 

Candidates, particularly strong ones, looking around at employment options on their own terms, are no different to consumers. Just as they will do their own research on the experience they encounter as a customer, on speed, on efficiency, on the communications they receive in making a purchase, they’ll make similar comparisons during their job search. 

They will be looking at you and your careers in relative rather than absolute terms.

However, the big difference between the various comparison sites and metrics touched on above and the candidate experience provided by employers is transparency. 

How well do you, as an employer, understand both how candidates perceive the process and the experience they go through when engaging with you? And how does such an experience compare with the offering of your competitors? 

How much more or less value-adding is your candidate experience?

Is tech adding to or detracting from such an experience?

How well or otherwise do your candidate communications function and land?

How slick and efficient is the experience you provide?

And all such answers need to be compared with what the competition is doing. 

It’s little point shortening your time to offer, for example, by x days if that remains two weeks longer than your talent competitors. 

Whilst there may well be tangible differences between one employer and another within a particular sector, those differences – likely to relate to culture, to progression, to DEI – are only genuinely understood by employees rather than candidates. Therefore, in the absence of lived and experienced differences, a candidate can only compare what they encounter – the applicant's experience. What they see, what they take from candidate communications, speed and efficiency, culture, respect, consideration, passion, and how engaged the people they come across are represent what they will think of you. 

For those candidates, your employer brand is your candidate experience. And because they are likely to be engaging with a number of employers, they are able to compare such experiences. To create rankings and league tables. 

What’s vital, then, is to understand how the candidate experience you currently provide to applicants compares to your employment peer group. Where are you on that league table?

I’d also suggest that we make such comparisons more during tougher times. If a customer is making a significant purchase when finances are tight, their research into the transaction will be forensic. The same logic applies to strong candidates making a career move during an uncertain labour market. 

Very simply, providing a candidate experience that compares favourably to your talent competitors is a competitive advantage. 

Equally simply, do you know how the candidate experience you are currently providing compares?

About
Neil Harrison is recognised as a leading employer brand specialist, creating insights and actionable intelligence around key people audiences. Internal employee communities, as well as external talent pools. These are insights which will help drive informed EVPs and their associated employer brands. Factors such as Brexit and a tightening labour market mean that organisations serious about talent acquisition need to act based on knowledge rather than guesswork.