Did you know that 1 in 4 recruiters asks for candidate feedback post-interview? How threatening is this number?!

A positive candidate experience is essential to creating a flattering brand image for your recruitment agency.

Sending a brief survey to the candidates at the end of the recruiting process will give you the most well-rounded insight into not just how the interview went but the whole procedure in general.

In addition, this shall also help you and your team enhance and improve upon the overall experience.

The clock starts the moment a candidate opens your recruitment website or sits to fill out a job application form.

While we have written in-depth guides previously on how to tackle this timeline, let’s go ahead and understand what recruiters should do post-interview.

Read more: How to measure candidate experience?

What is a candidate experience survey?

Recruitment is not just about hiring quality candidates for your clients.

It’s more about making sure you’re marketing your open roles properly in order to attract the right set of applicants, the ability to establish your agency as a market leader, and providing both your candidates and clients with a good after-taste in their mouths.

If you’re not creating a positive experience for your candidates, you’re losing half the battle.

A candidate experience survey usually helps recruiters optimize their entire hiring strategy and improves the recruiting process for candidates.

Such surveys can be easily created using tools such as Woorise and are served usually at the end of the interview.

Data from a candidate experience survey helps recruiters in different touchpoints.

Starting from how they should improve their job application process to the kind of questions being asked in the interviews, this survey can help you make informed decisions.

When to send a candidate experience survey?

The only way you can understand how a candidate truly feels about your recruitment agency is via a survey.

A candidate experience survey is usually sent by recruiters 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. These KPIs are then analyzed by the recruiters to understand areas where there is still room for improvement.

What to 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’ll actually interest users to review 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 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 (wouldn’t recommend this agency at all) to 10 (would definitely recommend this agency to everyone). Here are a few examples of ratings-based survey questions—

  • How likely is it that you would 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 really 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 upon?
  • Were you guided properly before the start of the interview?

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

How to create a candidate experience survey?

1. Choose a tool that fits your needs

Using tools like Typeform and Google Forms, you can create online questionnaires that are simple and effective. 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 every one of them 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.

How to use candidate surveys to improve your candidate experience?

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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