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Talent Board Reveals 2015 North American Candidate Experience Research

Talent Board Reveals 2015 North American Candidate Experience Research

New Report Highlights the Latest Trends and Proven Strategies to Deliver an Exceptional Candidate Experience

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–(Marketwired – Feb 9, 2016) – Talent Board, a non-profit organization focused on the promotion and data benchmark research of a quality candidate experience, today announced the release of “Candidate Experience 2015,” its latest research into the trends, practices and technologies impacting candidate experience today. Based on the findings of the fifth annual North American Candidate Experience (CandE) Awards and Research program, this new research report shares crucial findings on how today’s companies can continually elevate the candidate experience through each stage of the recruiting process.

“The candidate experience represents so much more than just an individual’s impression of the application process; its effects can be far reaching and impact the company’s ability to attract and retain new candidates and customers alike,” said Elaine Orler, chairman and co-founder of Talent Board. “For five years now, the CandE Awards and Research benchmarking program has sought to provide necessary validation for best practices in recruiting, while disproving long-held assumptions. As our 2015 findings show, candidates continue to have a stronger voice in the recruiting process, and the employers that realize this and react accordingly will be better positioned to improve the candidate experience and attract the best talent.”

Launched in 2010, the CandE Awards and Research program began as a way to measure the business value of treating candidates well and the costs of treating them poorly. Previously, there had been no formal mechanism for validating the candidate experience externally; doing so was limited to a company’s self-proclamations or subjective, award-based decisions. With the CandE Awards, Talent Board created a benchmark process for companies to gain needed insight into the candidate experience based on an in-depth survey of their recruiting practices and feedback from their candidates. Through this approach, the organization introduced the first systematic and disciplined approach to comparing differences in employer practices and their impact on candidate attitude and behavior.

As more companies recognize the value of such data, and more candidates relish the opportunity to voice their opinions on the recruiting process, the CandE Awards program has grown exponentially. For the 2015 program, Talent Board collected survey data from more than 130,000 candidates who applied to over 200 participating companies eager to find out what their candidates had to say. Collectively, the organization now has a database of global candidate surveys approaching half a million, the world’s largest source of high-quality, academically validated candidate data on recruiting performance.

Candidate Experience 2015 reveals many key findings into the current state of candidate experience, including:

  • More sophisticated candidates: Candidates continue to take more control of their own journey; 76 percent conduct their own job search research across multiple channels prior to applying.
  • Onboarding becomes automated: More employers are leveraging onboarding solutions, with more than 60 percent using technology to automate forms management.
  • Interviews become more efficient: Employers are conducting fewer interviews per candidate, with 79 percent of companies now having one or two interviews related to a position, compared to 63 percent in 2014.
  • Mobile apply is still lagging: Although many technology providers have improved or enhanced their mobile capabilities, companies that offer mobile apply only see 8-10 percent of their candidates applying through a mobile device.
  • Candidate communication can be improved: Although most companies send an immediate automated “thank you,” nearly half of all candidates never receive an indication of the status of the application, and overall candidate communication has decreased from the application process to screening and dispositioning when compared to the 2014 CandE Research.

“We are incredibly grateful to all participating companies that opened the door and invited us to evaluate their current recruiting processes and survey their job candidates,” said Kevin Grossman, vice president of the North American Candidate Experience Awards Program for Talent Board. “Each participant played a crucial role in helping us further identify the factors that contribute to a positive candidate experience, as well as the processes and technologies necessary to do so. We are thrilled to share these findings and expect that they will inspire more companies to adopt that strategies that lead to an exceptional candidate experience.”

Registration for the 2016 North American CandE Awards will open in late February 2016.

The 2015 North American Candidate Experience Research Report is available for download at: https://www.thetalentboard.org/cande-results-2015.

About Talent Board
Talent Board is a non-profit organization focused on the elevation and promotion of a quality candidate experience. The organization, Candidate Experience Awards program and its sponsors are dedicated to recognizing the candidate experience offered by companies throughout the entire recruitment cycle and to forever changing the manner in which job candidates are treated. More information can be accessed at https://www.thetalentboard.org.

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