Manufacturing Recruiters Should Care About Candidate Experience. Here’s Why.

This blog post underscores the importance of a positive candidate experience in the manufacturing recruitment process. It argues that a great candidate experience attracts more applicants, enhances candidate engagement, makes job offers more likely to be accepted, encourages referrals and sets the stage for a successful long-term employment relationship.

If you’ve ever applied for a job, you’ve probably had at least one poor experience with a prospective employer. From lengthy applications and endless screening questions to absent recruiters and awkward interviews, difficulties during the recruitment process can cause candidates to look elsewhere for their next opportunity.

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One way to proactively avoid those difficulties is to have a great candidate experience in place, starting when the candidate first sees your job posting. From there, the candidate experience continues through the application process, screening questions or follow-up messages, the interview and any eventual offer.

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Here are five reasons to emphasize the candidate experience in your recruiting process.

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5 Benefits of a Positive Candidate Experience in Manufacturing Recruitment

1. A great candidate experience draws more applicants.

A survey of over 1,000 employees revealed that 31% of candidates will give up on an application if it takes too long to fill out, and 42% will quit if the application is confusing or hard to complete. By designing a simple application that’s quick and easy to complete, you’ll generate more applicants and have a larger pool of talent to draw from.

You can also source more qualified candidates using FactoryFix’s one-stop job-sourcing engine. Your positions are viewable by our network of over 800,000 manufacturing professionals and we distribute the postings to both well-known and manufacturing-specific job boards. Our platform also features a dashboard that tracks applications received, outreach efforts, interviews and more. Plus, it enables secure messaging and note exchange between team members within each of your job postings to help your team stay on top of it all.

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2. Candidate experience goes hand-in-hand with candidate engagement.

Because you’re competing for a limited number of qualified candidates, you can’t afford to have candidates walking away halfway through the process. Keep candidates engaged by crafting an excellent job posting that provides candidates with the information they need. Follow that up by curating a great candidate experience that gives your candidates a positive view of your company early on and gets them excited about working for you. This is how you create and maintain candidate engagement throughout the process—which ensures you have options when you’re ready to extend an offer.

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3. Candidates who have had a good experience are more likely to accept an offer.

According to a survey of nearly 300 applicants, 63% of people would be less likely to accept a job offer if they had a negative candidate experience. On the other hand, 93% of people would be more likely to accept a job offer if they had a positive experience. In this competitive market, you need every advantage you can get—and ensuring that your candidates have a smooth experience creates a huge advantage.

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4. A positive candidate experience encourages referrals.

The better the experience a candidate has, the better your company looks. Focusing on the candidate experience shows not only that your company is organized, efficient and professional, but also that you value candidates as individuals. Demonstrate that you respect candidates and their time by making it quick and convenient to answer screening questions and sending a reminder before their interview to help them succeed. This improves the way candidates view your company, boosts your brand and encourages applicants to refer other people as well.

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5. A good candidate experience sets the stage for a better employment relationship.

When you ensure that candidates have a great experience, you’re setting your company up for a more successful and longer-lasting relationship with each new hire. By building trust and confidence during the recruitment process, you help candidates settle into their new positions faster, increase the likelihood that they’ll resolve issues rather than look for greener pastures and reduce turnover.

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Win the Competition for Great Talent by Prioritizing the Candidate Experience

If you’re committed to providing your candidates with a great hiring experience, FactoryFix can help. With our proven recruitment technology, you can source qualified candidates for your open jobs and identify your top picks in less time, speeding up the hiring process. Plus, our automated messaging and screening tools offer a cost-efficient way to build strong relationships with your candidates right off the bat without the hassle of manual outreach.

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