Have you ever wondered what your candidates think about after leaving the interview room? 

We know a simple and structured way to understand their thoughts about you and your recruitment process—candidate experience surveys. 

Let’s explore how you can create these surveys that enhance your applicant journey. 

What is a candidate experience survey?

A candidate experience survey is used by recruiters and hiring teams to gather feedback from job applicants about their experience throughout the recruitment process. 

This survey typically includes a series of questions that assess various stages of the hiring journey, such as:

  • Application process: How easy was it to find and apply for the job?
  • Communication: Were updates and feedback provided in a timely and transparent manner?
  • Interview experience: How professional and organized were the interviews? Did the candidates feel respected and valued?
  • Overall impressions: How did the recruitment process reflect the company’s brand and values?
8 free templates for candidate experience surveys that give you the right insights

When to send a candidate experience survey?

A survey is the only way you can understand how a candidate feels about your recruitment agency.

Recruiters usually send a candidate experience survey at the end of the initial recruiting process or after the final interview stage.

Once the survey is sent, certain key performance indicators are measured. The recruiters then analyze these KPIs to understand areas with room for improvement.

It’s high time you start following these 5 dynamic ways to ace candidate assessment!

What should you include in your candidate experience survey form?

Before we go ahead and talk about the kind of questions, let’s set some basic rules around this survey form.

  • Not more than 10 questions
  • Be direct, no dilly-dallying!
  • You can go ahead and add a gift voucher for the candidates. For instance, Gartner usually provides incentives or throws in an Amazon gift card or any other discount-seeking coupon that will actually interest users in reviewing software on their site.
  • Don’t go for too many open-ended questions.
  • Keep it short and simple. Candidates will lose interest if the survey form is too long.

NPS (Net Promoter Score) surveys have gained popularity in recent times. Such rating-based questions will provide sentiment analysis and help you understand how a candidate feels about your recruitment agency.

However, there are disadvantages to such ratings-based surveys, too. Sometimes, it lacks context behind questions.

Ratings-based surveys usually come with a scale of 0 (I wouldn’t recommend this agency at all) to 10 (I would definitely recommend this agency to everyone). Here are a few examples of ratings-based survey questions—

  • How likely would you recommend our agency to other job seekers?
  • How would you rate the job application process on a scale of 0-10?
  • How would you rate the interview process? 0 being sucked to 10 being super fun.

On the other hand, statement-based questions or short open-ended questions allow candidates to write candidly about what they feel about your agency. Here are a few examples of open-ended questions—

  • Were you communicated at every stage of the recruiting process?
  • Where do you think our recruitment agency could improve?
  • Were you guided properly before the start of the interview?

The best candidate experience survey forms usually have an ideal mix of close-ended and open-ended questions.

How to use gamification in recruitment to improve candidate experience?

4 steps to create a candidate experience survey

1. Choose a tool that fits your needs

Using tools like Typeform and Google Forms, you can create simple and effective online questionnaires. Creating a survey form has never been easier, thanks to these applications.

2. Keep it anonymous

It is a good idea to ask candidates what they think of your process, but there is no guarantee they will be honest. An anonymous survey makes it easier for candidates to give a candid opinion about the entire interview process.

3. Keep it short & easy

A candidate survey form should be very precise, specific, and brief.

Keep a combination of closed-ended and open-ended questions because candidates can quickly respond to close-ended ones without too much thought (e.g., multiple choice) but can better express themselves in open-ended questions (e.g., “How can we improve our hiring process?”).

4. Send it to every candidate who went through the interview process

It’s good to get feedback from your candidate, regardless of whether they were rejected or hired.

Sending the survey form to every candidate will give you different insights since they may not have gone through a similar experience. Sharing a QR code created using any of these best QR code generators with the candidate could be an interactive way to collect feedback.

3 tips to improve candidate experience through surveys 

1. Study the answers

Look for patterns and trends in the responses to analyze and figure out the areas of improvement. It will help you get a clear vision of how to improve your candidate experience.

2. Combine all the feedback received from different sources

After the hiring process is completed, job seekers often write reviews on Glassdoor, post opinions on social media such as Linkedin, or contact recruiters. Take a look at all the sources to get a thorough understanding of how candidates feel about your recruitment agency.

3. Work on improvizing

Finding out what you’re getting everything right and what you’re doing wrong with your candidate experience survey is key to improving it.

After you’ve identified your strengths and weaknesses, the next step is to restructure your hiring process to provide an unforgettable candidate experience.

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