FAIRWINDS Credit Union
FAIRWINDS Credit Union, led by President and CEO Larry Tobin, is headquartered in Orlando, Fla., and is consistently ranked as one of the best financial institutions and employers in the region. Founded in 1949, the company has 619 employees.
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?
One change that we were excited to accomplish is a full hiring process timeline, including the automated response email received when a candidate applies. An infographic illustrates the expected timeline for the hiring and decision process. The change we are most proud of is reaching salary transparency on our external job postings. We now post starting salaries for each position. Both changes have received unsolicited positive feedback from candidates during the interview process and have made conversations around pay more comfortable.
2. Why did you decide to make changes to how candidates were being treated? What data or evidence prompted you to make a change?
I am fortunate to have the support of my organization to prioritize candidate experience. Our employer brand has received a lot of focus and support over the past few years, and this was an extension of that work. We had never measured candidate experience before, but we always strive to be top of class in what we do. Once we entered this survey process, I started looking at past winners to get ideas of possible changes we could make. There was no specific instance that brought on these changes, just the desire to deliver a best-in-class experience to our candidates and build a strong employer brand.
3. How did you build support and commitment within your team and the broader
organization? How did you demonstrate the importance of candidate experience?
When the job market changed and the Great Resignation started, all focus went to recruiting. We had been working towards an employer brand for a few years, but that brought it to top of mind for the organization. This makes it an easy conversation to have, and as a financial institution, we do not make big moves without data. We consistently survey our employees and members but had never looked at candidates before. We also know that a lot of our candidates are our members and want to deliver the same great experience and care they receive when doing business with us. When hiring managers are getting positions filled quickly and retention is high, our organization understands the importance of a good candidate experience.
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 was the first candidate experience we participated in. Previously we would rate our candidate experience with a new-hire orientation survey. However, that mainly focused on the orientation/training process. We also look at time to fill, no-show ratio for orientation, and 90-day retention. Our recruiting metrics involve time to fill and retention, and the manager metrics include recruiting timeline standards and retention.
For example, our managers have 24 hours upon receipt of a candidate to reach out to them to schedule an interview. After that, we must have a final decision within seven business days. Our expectation is for managers to be able to evaluate candidates for job fit against the job, not other candidates. This helps us decline or keep a conversation going with candidates in a more timely manner than waiting until we make a selection to inform everyone.
