surveying the job candidate experience

Thu, May 12, 2005

Marketing people love numbers. They love to know how much Web traffic went up, how many conversions are made and what those conversions cost.

HR people, in contrast, care much less about such metrics. As long as the resumes are flowing and openings are being filled, then all is puppy dogs and kittens.

However, where most HR departments fall way short - and shouldn’t - is in measuring how people feel about their company’s application process.

Studies I’ve seen are quite telling. Most job seekers are disgruntled with corporate online career centers.

But not your company, right? Well, how do you know?

Consider making an online survey accessible to people who apply to a job on your Web site. Once a resume is received, follow-up with an automatic e-mail or Thank You page that hotlinks to an anonymous questionnaire.

Services such as SurveyMonkey are easy to use and well worth the $19.95 a month for the invaluable data you should receive. Plus, people will appreciate that you actually care enough to get their 2 cents.

Discover: How easy was it to find your jobs from the homepage? Was submitting a resume easy or difficult? Does your career center make the grade?

HR is great at putting others under the microscope. It’s about time they tasted a little of their own medicine.

This post was written by:

Joel Cheesman - who has written 1254 posts on Cheezhead.

One of the most widely-read bloggers on emerging recruitment issues in the world. Accomplishments include being named Recruiting.com’s Best Technology Recruitment Blog and Best Recruiting Blog. Joel's been featured in Fast Company magazine, BusinessWeek Magazine, Resumes for Dummies, U.S. News & World Report, The Wall Street Journal and more. Plug into Joel via Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, iTunes, YouTube or Flickr.

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1 Comments For This Post

Andrew Marritt Says:
May 13th, 2005 at 3:33 am

Great post Joel.

Measuring people’s attitudes throughout the recruitment process is critical if you want to become competitive. As you say, few do it.

Many firms survey those who join to see their opinions. This approach of course misses out those who decided not to join you, of that there wasn’t a fit. Remember, for many firms these people are likely to be customers (I posted on that here: http://resourcingstrategies.com/2004/12/03/linking-the-corporate-and-employment-brand/ ). If you annoy someone in recruitment you probably loose a customer. How many people applied last year? Do you want to lose that many customers?

There are lots of other ways of measuring how people view your site. Looking at the search criteria that they use on your company’s site is a good indicator for what they can’t find, looking where they abandon the site….

You can change your approach as much as you like but without surveying you are really only changing it for your benefit, not the applicants.

Andrew Marritt Says:
May 13th, 2005 at 3:33 am
Great post Joel.

Measuring people’s attitudes throughout the recruitment process is critical if you want to become competitive. As you say, few do it.

Many firms survey those who join to see their opinions. This approach of course misses out those who decided not to join you, of that there wasn’t a fit. Remember, for many firms these people are likely to be customers (I posted on that here: http://resourcingstrategies.com/2004/12/03/linking-the-corporate-and-employment-brand/ ). If you annoy someone in recruitment you probably loose a customer. How many people applied last year? Do you want to lose that many customers?

There are lots of other ways of measuring how people view your site. Looking at the search criteria that they use on your company’s site is a good indicator for what they can’t find, looking where they abandon the site….

You can change your approach as much as you like but without surveying you are really only changing it for your benefit, not the applicants.

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