Employer Branding IS Candidate Experience

Happy 5th of November!

If you've had the chance to watch Brainfood Live from last week, you'd probably have realised that one of my comments on Candidate Experience (CX) may have made some reference to a non-existent theory given the context. A theory which I am yet to substantiate on my blog. After mentioning CX to the chat which was badly received, I did a quick look at the search engine results for the term "Candidate Experience Employer Branding" and found several articles from not too long ago which point to the fact that CX is highly assumed by leading talent leaders to be synonymous with EB.

Here's a link to the 1-hour long survey I was sent via e-mail recently on the topic of "CX" compiled by my previous employer - the one I mentioned in Brainfood Live. The phases of the questionnaire are extremely detailed and make for interesting reading if your organisation is trying to present a strong brand during the application phase for new employees. Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like to learn more about this.

But essentially, what I'd like to explore is the idea that this questionnaire reflects "good" EB. Indeed, it does. The e-mail which it was enclosed in was marketed appropriately and sufficiently enough to warrant me accepting it as a positive experience against my overall experience as an applicant. This then raises the question - what makes for "bad" EB? Well, again as I stated in Brainfood live, a piece of research I read not too long ago seems to suggest that candidates give negative feedback when their experiences are negative and no feedback whatsoever when their experiences are positive, except of course if they are chased for feedback.

So, what then creates good EB practices? Is it healthy to engage with candidates you have rejected so frequently so as to encourage them to re-apply or stay on as customers in a broader sense. One piece of research I read this week suggested that Virgin Media loses an average of £4.4m a year due to bad candidate experiences which convert into lost subscriptions.

What that tells us is that a candidate's experience can be a packaged and tangible fixed cost (or asset) to a business. Thus, the notion of an Employee Value Proposition (EVP) emerges as a remedy to this particular objective constraint. Where does the brand value in your organisation rest? How can you convey this to improve CX? Those are the only two questions you should be asking as a business leader in your organisation.

Thanks for reading.