Emerald X
Emerald is a leader in building dynamic, market-driven business-to-business platforms that integrate live events with a broad array of industry insights, digital tools, and data-focused solutions to create uniquely rich experiences.
1. What changes have you made to your candidate experience recently? What improvements are you most proud of? How do you know that your changes are making a difference?
Candidate experience has always been a priority, so we haven’t made any drastic changes yet in 2021 (though we have several coming for 2022). Every candidate gets an automated response when they submit an application, and every candidate gets a final notice about their status, no matter how far they made it in our interview process. We hear so much gratitude from candidates who are just happy to get a “we’re not moving forward” notice. It’s amazing how many companies can’t even bother to send them. We also do our best to respond to candidates who ask for feedback. We can’t get to everyone, but if there’s something easy we can share about why they weren’t selected, we do. It’s something basic, but even that little effort can make a big impact on someone struggling with their job search.
2. Why did you decide to make changes to how candidates were being treated? What data or evidence prompted you to make a change?
Our team understands what it’s like to be a job seeker. We’ve all done it multiple times in our careers. It’s easy to empathize with a job seeker when you remember what your experience felt like. We continue to make changes to our candidate experience as we receive feedback from candidates.
3. How did you build support and commitment within your team and the broader organization? How did you demonstrate the importance of candidate experience?
We’re in the live events business, and we track customer satisfaction metrics for all of our shows, so our leadership team already understands the connection between someone’s experience and their likelihood to revisit or engage with us again. It’s the same concept in recruiting: The application experience is more than a transactional process, and one that impacts our business and our reputation. That experience also impacts our ability to build relationships with qualified talent in a tight-knit industry. Our applications are heavy on referrals, and we often don’t have that perfect position open when we’re introduced to a candidate. So being able to provide a great experience no matter when someone applies, or to what job, lets us continue to build and capitalize on those relationships to fill future roles.
4. How do you measure candidate experience? How do you report on your recruiting process? How do you use that data to demonstrate financial impact as well as manage recruiter and hiring manager behaviors?
This is our first time participating in the CandE survey, and this data provided our first benchmark of candidate experience. The survey data has highlighted several areas where our high-touch efforts have paid off, and it’s highlighted other areas where we need to continue to invest and improve. We’ve measured these areas anecdotally in the past (repeat applications, tracking fills from candidates we already have relationships with, etc.), but having that data from our specific candidate pool is the best possible tool we could have to support further investment in our process.
