If you asked any job candidate today about their experience applying for and being screened and interviewed for any given position (if they even get that far), at any level position – hourly, salaried, management – they’d probably tell you that it sucked.
They’ll tell you that they received mixed expectation messages, that the process took too long, and that they never heard back at a certain point. We’ve got nearly two million candidate experience responses from our CandE Benchmark Research that underscore all that and more (our 2024 benchmark research results are coming soon).
Believe it or not, some candidates believe their candidate experience was positive and fair, even though they didn’t get the job in the end. This is why we do our research – to help identify what makes a positive candidate experience for the sheer volumes of people who unfortunately don’t get hired. Our research identifies the above-average candidate-rated employers focused on delivering human-centric communication and feedback for their job candidates, which is no easy trick today or any day. We also give awards to these employers each year to celebrate their accomplishments.
Collectively, the top 10 rated Candidate Experience (CandE) Award Winners in 2024 in North America have earned 56 awards over the past 13 years, averaging nearly six awards each. One company is a first-time winner, but the rest have won multiple awards. Seven of the employers also won CandE Awards in the other regions we track: EMEA, APAC, and Latin America. Again, these are all employers with above-average ratings in our annual benchmark research.
Why does it matter? It matters because these awards are solely based on the employers’ candidate feedback and ratings via our annual benchmark research program. Most of the surveyed candidates are rejected – 90% of them. You can read more about the 2024 CandE Award Winners here. We also just celebrated them at our ERE Recruiting Conference back in November.
This year, we also gave away new awards for the most innovative candidate experience improvements. We had nearly 30 award entries from this year’s CandE Winners. While the primary CandE Awards are based on direct candidate experience feedback and ratings, our team reviewed these new awards. It was tough to decide, too. But in the end, we selected five employers with stand-out improvements that were innovative, unique, and validated with data.
Here, they are in alphabetical order. These will also be part of multiple case studies that will be available soon.
The Most Innovative Candidate Experience Improvements
D2L
Pay Transparency:
D2L advertises a narrow base salary range rather than a wide range to provide an accurate representation of what to expect, and this applies to all role levels such as co-op, entry-level, and senior positions. They’ve seen a reduction in offer declines due to compensation – from February to December 2023, they had 11 compensation-related offer declines. In contrast, we have only had six compensation-related offer declines in the same time period this year (post-implementation), a 45% decrease.
Pre-boarding / Onboarding:
Because companies must constantly re-recruit to retain, D2L conducts surveys and live interactive interviews with new hires at the 30-day mark to gain insights into and improve upon their pre-boarding and initial onboarding experiences. Based on the feedback, they are updating their enablement documentation for managers regarding pre-boarding communications with new hires and preparing new hire onboarding plans and training resources. They also have an 87% offer acceptance rate to-date this fiscal year.
Northwell Heath
Career Coaching:
Northwell Health’s Coffee and Careers is a monthly careers event that provides an opportunity for individuals (offered to current employees and/or external candidates) to meet with a talent acquisition specialist for an in-person or virtual career coaching session, to provide them with career path guidance, resume review, exploration of clinical and non-clinical opportunities and/or more. They completed 736 total coaching sessions from April to August this year.
Community Intervention:
Northwell has increased partnerships with community-based groups, faith-based organizations, and libraries in underserved communities to help inform and prepare individuals for employment, as well as introduce new job training programs. Since October 2023, there have been 321 participants across Harlem, Staten Island, Jamaica, Corona/Elmhurst, Brentwood, Central Islip, and Huntington (the Dolan Center), and 73 offers have been accepted for Northwell careers.
Room & Board
Open Req Threshold:
Room & Board created a process for putting newly approved requisitions “on recruiting hold” when their requisition workload is high. They collaborate closely with their leaders to prioritize these roles, ensuring that they focus on the most critical positions as capacity becomes available. This approach not only helps them manage their workload effectively but also enhances the overall candidate experience by allowing them to dedicate the necessary time and resources to each search. Their candidate ranking went from 35th place in 2023 to 17th in 2024. Another significant impact has been a recruiter’s capacity to identify applicants to nurture for future hiring needs, decreasing time to fill from a standard 9 weeks, down to 3 weeks on average.
Actionable Insights:
Room & Board also enhanced its ATS dashboard to empower recruiters with actionable insights for prioritizing candidate outreach more effectively. The updated dashboard highlights candidates nearing the 5-day follow-up deadline after applying, as well as those who are “stalled” in the workflow without any recent activity. There has been a significant reduction in the time spent on administrative tasks, which has freed up recruiters to focus on building meaningful relationships with candidates.
Schneider Electric
Internal Candidate Experience:
This was one of the most strategic, important, and critical improvements for Schneider Electric in North America. The internal candidate experience impacts beyond the talent acquisition function, impacting the retention, engagement, and development of our employees.
Technology Improvement: They collaborated with the global talent acquisition team to connect 2 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which resulted in a smoother application process for candidates and an enhanced candidate management experience for recruiters and hiring managers.
Change Management and People Coaching: A deep and strong change management initiative was undertaken to drive awareness and ownership for the internal candidate pool. This involved empathetic leadership coaching to emphasize the importance and impact of internal candidates, focusing on retention and career growth.
Candidate-Centric Approach: The strategy emphasized a candidate-centric approach, acknowledging the current market trends that place candidates in the driver’s seat. The commitment to respond to no more than 25% of candidates waiting to hear back highlights the organization’s respect for candidate time and interest.
The most impressive improvement was the transformation of the internal candidate experience. For the same period, the NPS score went from 41.1 to 66.9 (+ 25.8 points), a 62% increase.
Smile Brands
Recruiting Technology Implementation and Optimization:
Smile Brands implemented a new Applicant Tracking System (iCIMS) including offer center, onboarding module, text engagement, and CRM (iCIMS). Smile Brands also implemented a new chat bot with the name – Pearl E. White (Paradox). Pearl sits on their career site and answers candidate questions. They did all of this in under 12 months.
Their brand-new career site offers job seekers an intuitive and user-friendly experience (Careers.smilebrands.com). Their career site includes videos and provides a real preview of what it’s like to work at their company and their affiliates. They’ve included details about our different career areas, culture, Smiles for Everyone Foundation, early career programs, and more. Their application process can be completed in 1.5 minutes, and the site includes a new chatbot named “Pearl E. White” (Paradox) that assists candidates in real-time, answering their questions and guiding them through the application process.
Looking for a job sucks. The only happy candidates are those who ultimately get the job, but most won’t for any given job they’re interested in. At least not the first time, the second time, or even the third time. Our holiday wish is that there’s a job for everyone where they can make a decent living to provide for themselves and their families, where they feel they belong, and where they can learn and develop themselves for what’s next.
So, enough with the negative; let’s celebrate positive candidate experiences and build on those in 2025 and beyond. Job candidates everywhere are counting on it.
Join us on January 15, 2025, for #CandExperienceDay 2025 by sharing your positive candidate experience stories, quotes, memes, pictures, and videos online via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and more.