What is a Candidate Journey?

The candidate journey is a set of steps that candidates go through during the recruiting process – from awareness to hiring.

One of the biggest challenges for the HR team is to provide the best candidate experience. From awareness to hiring, the professional goes through several stages of the selection process – each one with a different qualification – that draw the Candidate’s Journey.

Thinking about these stages strategically defines your NPS and determines the success in the search for hiring the best employees.

Do you know how to create an excellent Candidate Journey? Want to learn more about this process? In this post, we’ve put together everything you need to know about the Candidate’s Journey, as well as essential tips for a successful selection process. Keep reading to learn more!

In this article, we’ll learn more about:

• What is a Candidate Journey?
• Why does the candidate journey matter?
• How can you map a Candidate Journey?
• 5 Steps of the Candidate Journey with Plooral

What is a Candidate Journey?

The Candidate Journey is a set of experiences that candidates go through during the selection process. 

Nowadays, thinking of ways to make this journey much more assertive and attractive to the best professionals is essential for developing your employee team. The best candidates choose the best companies, so make sure your company has been seen as a great place to work.

Why does the candidate journey matter?

The Candidate Journey mapping allows you to visualize all the steps in the selection process and the ways to improve it. It’s an opportunity for your HR team to rethink some aspects of your company’s recruitment, understand the strengths and weaknesses of your Candidate Journey, and think about how to improve the candidate’s experience – already looking to increase your NPS.

Some tools help you improve your candidate journey, like an ATS, that make the hiring experience much more enjoyable.

Discover other benefits of mapping your Candidate Journey:

• Improve hiring process
• Select the best candidates
• Reduce turnover

How can you map a Candidate Journey?

The Candidate’s Journey is drawn by all stages of the selection process – beginning, middle, and end. This journey starts when the candidate is interested in your company and goes until the hiring when the professional is no longer a candidate and becomes an employee.

This journey can vary from company to company, and it can also depend on the vacancy type. But overall, there are some common Candidate Journey topics. To better plan your mapping, find out what these steps are:

1. Awareness 

The beginning of everything. The candidate needs to discover your company! This can happen from a conversation with a friend to ads on job portals.

2. Consideration and Interest

After getting to know your company, the candidate needs to be interested in the position. This can happen in different ways, from an attractive vacancy page to an interest in a specific position or the benefits offered by your company.

3. Application

After finding enough elements that attract him to your company, the candidate becomes interested in the vacancy and submits the application.

4. Selection

At this stage, the candidate will go through a series of hiring processes – such as interviews, tests, questionnaires, etc. – which will be strategically placed to assess whether he fits the profile sought or not.

Improve your selection process:

• Understand your candidate’s profile
• Is your application mobile-friendly? Most applications have been made via smartphones in recent years, so make sure your applicants can easily go through this process on mobile.
• Have efficient communication with your candidates: feedback is always welcome 🙂

5. Hiring

We’ve reached the last stage! In this final phase of the Candidate’s Journey, the professional directly contacts HR to start the hiring process. 

Make sure you have good communication with him and remember that the candidate’s journey hasn’t ended yet – almost 30% of candidates leave the company after 3 months.

5 Steps of the Candidate Journey with Plooral

During the selection process within Plooral platform, from finding your job advertisement on a job portal to being hired by your company, your candidate will go through 5 steps. Understand better which ones below:

1 – Finding your vacancy ad

When you post a new position on Plooral, it’s automatically shared across multiple portals, such as Indeed, Glassdoor, Plooral’s App, LinkedIn, and more. It is in these spaces that, usually, candidates discover your ad.

2 – Visiting your career’s page

Within Plooral platform, you can set up a personalized career’s page for your company, but if you prefer, your candidates can also be directed to your official website. The career’s page is where the candidate has the first contact with your company, so try to keep it always updated.

3 – Applying for the position

Here you will find your famous “pre-qualification funnel”. When registering a new vacancy on Plooral, you will customize the steps in your funnel to form the path that your candidate will take. This funnel follows these steps:

• Presentation: Space where you can add videos, images, and employee comments so that your candidate can better understand your company – your values, culture, mission, and more.

• Frequently Asked Questions: Step where you can add a FAQ with frequently asked questions that can help candidates with some common questions.

• Resume register: The candidate will be able to fill in their personal and professional information.

• Questionnaire and/or test: In this stage, you can apply questionnaires (with open questions or not) to assess the candidate’s skills.

• Video recording: Here, the candidate will be able to record a presentation video. This step is optional, and you can add it if you find it necessary according to your job profile.

4 – Communication during the hiring process

Within the Kanban system, you can visualize your entire hiring process (which can also be customized). Then, you can also add automated messages to chat with your candidates and invite them for interviews, for example.

5- Receiving feedback

Also in Kanban you have the option to send automated or personalized feedback; you can also send emails to your candidates, dismiss or hire them, etc. All directly from the Plooral platform.

Now that you know everything about the Candidate’s Journey, it’s time to put these tips into practice! Remember that, especially in difficult positions, recruiters become competitors for the best talent. In other words, your Candidate Journey should be the best it can be.