28 of March, 2025

Improving the candidate experience during hiring processes involves applying a series of techniques and strategies that are key to ensuring all interviewees extract a positive experience about the company. The definition of candidate experience is based on the perception and opinion that interviewees extract in each of the stages of the selection process.

That is, in each of the contacts established with the company an image is projected, for example: on social networks, during the interview or after the interview.

In this practical guide to creating a candidate experience strategy, you will discover everything that involves working this type of techniques for your company and what are the golden rules to achieve it, among them having a hiring tool to transform the way of finding talent and simplify the search process.. Let’s get started!

Benefits of developing a candidate experience

Candidates who live a positive recruitment experience are probably the ones most likely to become subscribers to job offers, motivated employees and amplifiers of your brand. The benefits of interviewing candidates and reflecting a good concept of your brand and the same as an employer are not few, below we have gathered the most important ones:

Defining a candidate experience strategy, whether for hiring a remote team or conducting personal interviews, is essential to generate a good image of the company. The first step for this is to compile a list of each of the times the candidate will have contact with the company. Then you will have to make sure that he receives the right treatment. To start, these are the phases that all selection processes have:

Decreases hiring process costs.
Reduces employee turnover rate.
Increases professional recommendations.
Successful re-contact with candidates discarded in another selection process.

Tips to define and improve the candidate experience strategy

Although there is no magic formula for any selection process to be positive for all candidates, by working on the following points you can make a difference from the rest of your competition. Read carefully and put into practice the following tips to define and improve the candidate experience strategy.

1. Identify each phase of the candidate experience

First contact with the company.
The job description.
Personal interview.
Feedback and contact throughout all stages of the recruitment process.
Hiring communication.
Communication of disqualification of the application.

2. Review the process and improve each of its stages to the maximum

Analyzing and correctly defining each of the stages of the candidate experience can help you to sow a more positive perception of the brand image. Think correctly about the keywords of a job description, reflect the actual values of the company, determine the number of necessary job interviews and the feedback that candidates receive at each step of the selection process are some of the options that can help you to improve the candidate experience. What are you waiting for?

3. What is your value proposition for the candidate?

The value proposition for interviewees to bet on your company after an interview must be interesting and motivate the employee. Proposals for internal promotion, compensation such as: salary or benefits, the team, the work environment, the type of work methodology are some of the factors that you should take into account when developing an attractive value proposition.

The flexibility of working hours, teleworking, work and family reconciliation, all these aspects can be relevant when choosing one company or another. Having a time control software that allows flexible hours and work and family conciliation, self-management and much more like Sesame HR can be a competitive advantage against the rest of the sector.

4. Take care of the brand image on the company’s job page

First of all, in this aspect you should think about the content of the job page. The mission of the company, its philosophy and values embodied in the Web and specifically in the employment portal through videos, texts and other resources.

In addition, it is important on these types of websites that you simplify the signup process by uploading CVs in Word or Pdf or syncing with LinkedIn so that the candidate does not need to complete each and every one of the fields.

Bet on a website that adapts to mobiles, either with responsive or amp content or specifically designed for these types of devices. In conclusion, creating a successful job page can reduce the bounce rate and will increase the database of potential candidates.

5. Attend events to capture human talent

Attending HR events, participating in meetups and other actions of these characteristics can help you improve the company’s talent acquisition strategy and increase the number of subscribers to job offers.

6. Avoid generating a bad experience in the candidate

Performing a selection process impeccably is essential to take care of the candidate before, during and after an interview. A negative experience after contact with your company can generate serious consequences and affect the brand image.

On the other hand, if you generate good experiences for the candidates who have applied for a job, both to those who are discarded and those who are chosen to join the company, you will get lovers of your brand, which means that they will recommend your companies.

7. Bet on a software that optimizes the candidate strategy

There are multiple tools oriented to selection processes and that allow automating a series of processes, such as ATS or applicant tracking systems that are responsible for receiving the applications, filtering the best qualified candidates and performing the follow-up of the entire selection process, such as the HR software of Sesame HR.

8. Transparency, your best ally

When disqualifying an application, candidates deserve to know the real reasons why they are not chosen. So that they can improve in their future interviews bet on sincerity, since this information can be very valuable in their professional career.

Respond instantly and communicate by automating certain processes, but always personalizing the response and making it feel unique.

In the same way, write a job description that does not contain fine print or omitted details that are relevant to the candidate. The job description must necessarily cover the following information: start date, salary range, benefits, experience and skills, description of tasks and stages of the selection process.

9. Monitor each stage

With the help of different business tools focused on the recruitment process, you can define notifications at each of the stages to indicate the closing of it or the beginning of the next one, as well as proceed to inform them of the decisions that have been taken.

And maintain active listening to ensure a positive experience during the selection process. It is also important that as a recruiter, you pay attention to all candidates and questions that have been previously answered.

10. Trace a strategy with the company’s social profiles

The majority of candidates follow the brands that interest them most in their sector, are up to date with their news and job offers through social networks. This channel is an additional way to capture human talent and you can get more out of it if you post job offers, send news, and promote employee opinions.

11. Identify the most relevant metrics and measure the strategy you have set

With this guide to creating a candidate experience strategy, you now know how to make candidates think you are a receptive recruiter. Once you have taken care of all the aspects mentioned in this article, you are not done, now comes the most important step: measurement.

The number of candidates that has arrived through the employment portal, recommendations, an event or the feedback of a survey after finishing the selection process are some of the figures and information that can imply the continuous improvement of a candidate experience strategy.

Optimize the recruitment process with Sesame HR

Are you looking for the talent that best fits your team and corporate culture? Opting for a strong recruitment software like Sesame HR helps to reinforce each of the most important issues of selection and hiring. With the implementation of these types of tools in the company, you will recruit staff taking care of all the details.

Sesame HR is a tool that is part of our HRIS, its main function is to help to collect all the information about candidates and vacancies that are available at the moment.

In this way, the Human Resources department can supervise the status of the candidates in a clear and intuitive way. Regarding candidates you can detail the following information:

Name
Evaluation
Vacancy
Status: to be interviewed, selected, discarded, interviewed….
Comments
Requirements and checklist to carry out the selection process
Additional Documents: CV, portfolio, recommendation letters…
Date of creation

With the recruitment functionality, you can share the candidates’ impressions with the rest of the team for evaluation, adding comments.

Another step that this solution simplifies is that you can simplify the decision-making process of hiring and selecting personnel.

Sesame HR, also allows to know the state of each vacancy and candidate at each step of the selection process. Compare the most interesting candidates and detect the best profile.

When the hiring process is over, you can keep the professional profiles that you like best for future selection processes. Don’t forget that discarded candidates may be perfect to join your team tomorrow.

Remember that in this way you will reduce mistakes and duplication of information and data that you are using in the current job offers. Thus, it is very simple to adapt the steps of the personnel selection process to the way your human resources department works.

As you can see, Sesame HR helps you track the entire process and follow it up easily. Want to see for yourself? Register and get a 14-day free trial. Take your company’s recruitment process and candidate experience to the next level.

Professional with over 20 years of extensive experience in various areas of Human Resources (Recruitment, Training, Occupational Risk Prevention, and Personnel Management). Experience in the Management Department: Broad understanding of the company and HR.

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cristinamartin

HR Content Specialist

Candidate experience strategy: how to create it step by step?