Do you know how candidates feel about applying and interviewing for job openings with your company? How your company shapes candidate experience has a direct impact on your recruiting success (or failure). Studies show that a majority of candidates will share their experience with your recruiting process, whether negative or positive.

How common is a bad candidate experience? Research and consulting firm Gartner reports that 46 percent of employees are unhappy with their overall employer experience. CareerBuilder reports that candidates want and expect a good experience when applying and interviewing, and don’t hesitate to leave when disappointed.

Research shows that candidates who have a negative experience with an employer don’t just leave that interaction. They also take their purchases, recommendations, and business relationships. The high cost of bad candidate experience loses good candidates, impacts employer brand, and turns unhappy candidates into unhappy customers.

Losing Good Candidates

In the crush of recruiting tasks to fill openings, you may not be aware of candidates’ opinions of your organization. But your focus should be on those opinions and influencing them for the positive to avoid losing good candidates. Stiff competition for top available talent means your company can’t afford a bad candidate experience that loses applicants.

There are many ways to lose good candidates because of bad candidate experience. With a majority of job seekers sharing their job search experiences online, you can lose candidates before they even apply as they are influenced by negative information from other job seekers. You can lose good candidates if your interview process is too long as they are likely to drop out of your process and move on to other opportunities.

Audit and consultancy firm Deloitte describes touchpoints in the candidate experience where employers lose good candidates. They call them moments that matter (MTM), and they matter to the candidates, but should also matter to your company for recruiting. Enhancing key moments in the candidate experience with personalized attention, simple processes, and technology can make or break the candidate experience.

Deloitte describes key MTMs as the job application and interviews, and these should be areas of focus for improvement from the candidate’s point of view. It should be easy for applicants to apply to your openings; not a long-drawn-out and complicated process with unnecessary and tedious repetitions. Interviews should be easily scheduled and well-prepared.

Impact on Employer Brand

HR and recruiting expert Dr. John Sullivan knows that bad candidate experience negatively affects the employer brand. It creates negative word-of-mouth and bad online reviews, which are seen by other candidates looking at your openings. Sullivan describes “death by interview” that kills recruiting results.

He says it’s a common problem in the candidate experience. Excess interviews, more than three, discourage candidates and hurt recruiting results. Death by interview hurts employer brand, causes interview process abandonments, and delays time to hire. It loses your company top candidates, stresses candidates, and discourages future applicants.

Your employer brand is discussed on employer review sites, which candidates rate as very important to their decision to apply to openings. While job seekers are happy to share their positive candidate experiences, they are just as likely to tell others about their bad experiences with your company. Online forums to share information abound and are easy for candidates to assess your employer brand.

Unhappy Candidates Can Become Unhappy Customers

CareerBuilder found that bad candidate experience affects more than an employer’s recruiting ability. It can impact the ability to sell products and services. Surveys show candidates who have a bad experience with a company are less likely to buy from that company. And they don’t hesitate to use their influence with business contacts as well.

Employers should be acutely aware that unhappy candidates can quickly become unhappy customers who are the opposite of brand ambassadors and will work against your business. Beyond losing candidates as customers from bad candidate experiences, it can cost your company substantially. Look no further than Virgin Media’s bad candidate experience analysis.

When one of the cable and mobile provider's leaders started looking at post-interview surveys of rejected candidates, they were alarmed. Almost one-quarter of rejected candidates were also Virgin Media customers. Further analysis of what rejected candidates had experienced, and how they felt about it, gave the company deep insight into just how much their bad candidate experience was costing them.

With six percent of the 123,000 rejected candidates per year switching cable or mobile providers, Virgin Media saw their bad candidate experience cost them $5 million. They turned that around by making the candidate experience a company-wide priority with resources to back improvements. In doing so, they also found that it’s 10 times cheaper to get new customers through a great recruiting process than through traditional marketing channels.

Can You Afford the High Cost of Bad Candidate Experience?

Do your recruiters, hiring managers, and leaders know what candidates experience when they apply and interview at your company? If not, it’s time to look at it from A to Z and see if you are losing good candidates, damaging your employer brand, and creating unhappy customers with a bad candidate experience. It could be costing you top talent and millions in revenues.

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