Candidate Experience Metrics and How to Improve Them

In the recruiting metrics of the world, we talk a lot about formulaic and quantity-driven hiring metrics: cost per hire, time to fill, time to hire, interview-to-hire ratio, retention rates, and much more. 

Today, however, recruiters are looking at both quantitative and qualitative metrics to assess their hiring practices, engagement, and efficacy as hiring leaders. Among those qualitative metrics, candidate experience is one of the most important to track. 

What are candidate experience metrics?

Candidate experience metrics help you understand how candidates experience your hiring approach and process in every step of the recruitment cycle–from the moment they see your job post or receive a recommendation to apply, to the moment they receive an offer or rejection. 

Candidate experience metrics are valuable because they help you make important improvements that could yield better quality hires and more acceptances from top talent. With the recent mass layoffs and a precarious hiring market we’re entering, it’s especially important to understand what you are doing wrong or right in terms of appealing to candidates.

How do you measure the candidate experience?

You measure the candidate experience through surveys, candidate feedback, and hiring metrics that tell you how efficient each touch point is in your hiring process. These metrics may not paint the whole picture, but they can reflect a host of problems in your recruiting process. 

For example, if a high percentage of candidates are quitting their application at your job post page, that might be indicative that your post is confusing or off-putting in some other way. If you're converting a high percentage of applications from your job post page but have a low number of total job page visitors, you may need to bolster your targeting and marketing efforts. 

Below we’ll break down some of the most common candidate experience metrics to measure and look out for. 

Common candidate experience metrics

Here are some of the most common and useful candidate experience metrics to track.

Interview-to-offer ratio

A low interview-to-offer ratio is not sustainable for most hiring teams. The recruitment process is time-consuming and expensive, and if you aren’t effectively converting candidates to hires at the last stage of your hiring process, your time-to-hire and other efficiency metrics will be slow, wasteful, and inefficient. 

Low interview ratios usually indicate that you need to improve your interview practices or reassess your screening process. If candidates are getting through the cracks, but ultimately don’t do well in interviews, you may have to look for better-quality hires. 

Either way, a low interview-to-offer ratio will hurt the candidate experience, bringing down your brand and decreasing the chance that candidates will recommend your company to other potential hires.

Drop-off rate

More frustrating than not converting hires in the interview process is not having candidates to interview at all. Drop-off rate refers to the rate that candidates abandon a job application.

According to a Glassdoor study, the average drop-off rate is 80 percent, and according to a StandOut CV study, 60 percent of those drop-offs are because an application is too long or complicated.

 It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for a high drop-off rate, but we can’t emphasize enough how important a seamless and painless application process is to improve your drop-off rate. The easier it is for applicants to apply to get from A to Z, the more likely you are to see that drop-off rate improve. 

Candidate satisfaction ratings

One of the best ways to find out how candidates are experiencing your hiring process is to ask them directly. You can determine candidate satisfaction ratings with surveys and questionnaires, either through an objective third-party organization or by creating your own surveys. 

You can ask candidates about:

• How easy the application process was.
• Whether or not they would recommend your company to a friend.
• How prepared they found their interviewers and HR representatives to be. 
• How promptly and professionally your communication pipelines were. 
• How easy it was to move from one step to the next in your hiring process.
• How well the job description matched the actual job they ended up applying for. 

Pre-candidate experience

This metric is specifically designed for applicants that translate into actual hires. You can determine a new hire’s pre-candidate experience through an onboarding survey or questionnaire, and you’re primarily trying to find out what drew them into your hiring pipeline and eventually encouraged them to apply to your job post. 

You want to find out what aspects of your job post, marketing efforts, or communication exchange led them to take action to apply. You can include questions about your social media page, job description, or career website. 

How Crosschq helps improve your candidate experience metrics

Crosschq’s all-in-one hiring solution helps improve every step of the recruiting process with powerful analytics, 360 reference checking, TalentWall tools, and much more. Crosschq’s reference check technology will give you accurate reports within 48 hours, helping you assess candidates’’ strengths, weaknesses, and capabilities. 

With Crosschq, you can screen more effectively, helping you take the guesswork out of hiring and build diverse, winning teams. You’ll be better positioned to let go of unqualified candidates early in the application process and invest in more compatible applicants at higher rates.

Try the demo to learn more about how Crosschq can improve the candidate experience and help you hire with confidence today.