To attract top talent you need a great candidate experience

Delivering a great candidate experience is a necessity for all employers no matter how attractive they may think working for their company is. I will explain why this is and what you can do to improve it below.


Yes


Top-tier candidates always have a plethora of job options to choose from and their experience during the recruitment process can affect whether they say yes or not to yours.  Providing a seamless and positive experience for candidates can tilt the scale in favour of a 'yes.'



Networking


For a company to thrive, its employees must actively engage in talent scouting. However, a negative candidate experience can act as a deterrent, stifling networking efforts. When team members know that candidates they refer will be treated with respect and consideration, they are more likely to participate enthusiastically in the recruitment process.


Listen


To improve your candidate experience first you need to understand the existing one. This means you need to be able to measure it. Relying solely on online feedback or anecdotal evidence from recruiters is insufficient. Therefore, it is necessary to adopt a systematic approach.

A recommended strategy involves engaging in candid discussions with new hires approximately two months after their onboarding. This timeframe strikes a balance where their experience of your recruitment process is still fresh in their minds yet sufficient trust and rapport have been established for them to share their opinions openly. Identifying a trusted individual within the company, be it their manager, referrer, or HR personnel, to conduct these discussions ensures that they feel safe giving honest feedback.


Encouraging new hires to explain their decision to accept your company’s offer instead of their next best alternative provides valuable insights into your company's appeal.



Learn


Consistently gathering and anonymously sharing this data with your hiring team and HR will help to facilitate a better understanding of the candidate experience and the company's underlying candidate value proposition.



No


Don’t forget about the candidates who declined to accept your offer or who chose to withdraw from the process. Ask the person who they got on best with during the process to contact them and ask them the same structured list of questions as your hires are asked. This will allow you to glean valuable insights into why they opted out of pursuing a role with your company.


If you would like some advice about how you can attract top talent and elevate your company brand among candidates then please get in contact.


Current Roles 

AI: Time-saving superhero or sneaky job thief?

By Elliot Landy • May 2, 2025
Earlier this year, Madeleine attended a LinkedIn event called ‘Future Ready’ that focused on AI and how it can drive business development in the recruitment industry. Poor Mads had been joking for ages that one day her job would be overtaken by ChatGPT, so it was good to see her looking relieved the next day! 😂 As much as we use AI regularly to speed up certain tasks and save time, the human element is still very much needed to get decent results. For Chat GPT (or any AI software) to be of any real use, the processes behind it need to be solid, consistent and applied properly. You wouldn’t hire an admin assistant without giving them some training and we think of AI in the same way. If you wanted to use it to write a job spec, for example, you’d need to use a prompt that specifies the correct tone of voice, then check the text for inaccuracies, dodgy spelling and any missing information. AI is never going to replace our team’s decision-making, intuition or judge of character, so they don’t need to worry about being replaced! But what it does do is improve productivity so we can spend more time interacting with people and doing what we’re good at. 

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By Elliot Landy • April 30, 2025
How many times have you felt like you’re surrounded by idiots? There might be a very good reason for this (unless they are certified idiots, then you’re screwed!). 🥴 At Harte, we frequently refer to Persona Profiling, which uses four colours (red, blue, yellow and green) to identify individual traits so we can develop a better understanding of ourselves and others. From a recruitment point of view, this helps to define a job seeker’s characteristics and assess whether they’d be suited to a role or fit in with a business’s culture. Someone who is a ‘fiery red’ for example, will be results-orientated, strong-willed, and driven to achieve, whereas a ‘cool blue’ personality will have a more conventional energy that thrives on analysis and asking questions before making a move. Knowing this sort of information makes finding the right ‘fit’ for a company a whole lot easier because we have a clear idea of the traits and behaviours that are aligned with the role. It also gives us an indication of when we need to take a step back and slow things down in interviews to really get to know the job-seeker properly. If you’re keen to find out more about the four personality types, have a read of (or listen to) this book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Surrounded-Idiots-Behavior-Effectively-Communicate/dp/1250179947 Do you know what energy colour you lead by?

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By Elliot Landy • April 29, 2025
Basic salary: Up to £63,000, £5,100 car allowance, so total up to £68,100 per annum, plus a 5% annual discretionary bonus. Location: Leeds
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