How experiences impact your brand: The effects of a positive candidate experience

“What should the onboarding experience be for new customers?”

“If we release this in the product and they click “here”, are we solving the customer problem and is it a seamless experience?”

“What employee and candidate experience do we have that makes people want to work and stay here?

No matter if you sell products directly to consumers via an online experience or if you’re selling services or software to a business to integrate into their operations, thinking about these different “experiences” and users is crucial for success, and at its very core, is centered around people. 

As someone who has been involved in a week or sometimes month long workshops, multiple hour jam sessions, focus groups, and more, the level of dedication and thoughtfulness spent to create these experiences are meticulously thought out with every detail. It was very common to get caught up in the level of technical detail, but when we took a step back, whatever we created and improved, reminding ourselves that"customers are people", made for better experiences. 

But what about employee and candidate experiences?

The amount of time and resources most businesses put behind improving customer and user experiences that ultimately directly impact the top line, the question some would ask is, “Why not spend that same amount of time and detail on your employee and candidate experience?” Just like “customers” and “users”, employees and candidates are people. People are the core of what makes businesses operate and thrive and at the end of the day, have a heavy influence on your brand. 

With the increase of viral videos of horrible layoff calls or interview nightmares, your brand reputation can make an unfortunate turn overnight. Creating an experience that keeps your employees and candidates in mind is not only good for business, but can directly impact your brand health.

Let’s break down some of these experiences and why the importance of how people & brand experiences impact businesses today. 

Customer experience (CX)

To put it simply, the customer experience is everything organizations set up, from systems to personnel to documentation (we hope!), so that they can continue delivering exceptional experiences, value, and growth for their customers. 

If we think about customers not being a “business”, but at the end of the day, people interacting with people, even with all the documentation in the world won’t solve your customer experience. With the many different review sites like G2 or even the rise of Reddit, this experience is crucial in not only how it helps with retention or word of mouth, but inherently says something about your brand as well. 

User experience (UX)

The user experience takes that customer experience a step further and now focuses on those that use your product and how those users interact with and experience your product, systems or service. Given the heavy focus on individual experiences, and more of a 1:1 nature, ease of use and efficiency are at the core of a great user experience. 

Similar to the customer experience, with the many social media outlets and ways users have access to communities of other users, this experience is crucial. As a product marketer, and very much user focused working with product managers and product designers, coming back to the core epicenter that it’s “people” using the tool and solving problems that made their jobs easier, was crucial to our success. This thought isn’t just good for businesses, but good for the users aka people!

Employee and Candidate Experience (EX and CX)

Now unrelated to the workflow journey of a customer’s first interaction with the support team being able to quickly troubleshoot or an onboarding email that helps a customer set up their first integration, is the bigger picture as it relates to the teams of people who make businesses thrive and customers happy… the people experience as it relates to employees and candidates.  For internal teams, since many wear multiple hats, it’s common that the primary focus is on improving employee experience. While wanting to equally be able to balance that same amount of focus on the candidate experience and recruiting, it’s often challenging given lack of resources or even other fighting priorities. 

While ensuring internal employee satisfaction is crucial to keep businesses humming along, a bad candidate experience in your recruiting processes can in turn reflect negatively to your employer brand and potentially even deter top candidates as well. 

When you create a positive employee and candidate experience, doing or getting a job becomes more than that. Any great interactions with your organization, help attract top talent, create happier and healthier work cultures and people will more commonly become advocates of your brand and its products. 

“If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.” - Simon Sinek

At the end of the day, any experiences involving people interacting with people are so essential and impactful to your business. At the core, the outcome will reflect in how others think about your brand, which can have major impacts to the business. 

Here at Nimble Technology Partners, a Chicagoland based staffing and recruiting firm, we are truly people centric in creating the best candidate experience. As partners to our clients, we believe in aligning values that enable us to be a true extension of their teams. 

Looking for a partner to help you with your staffing and recruiting needs that truly put the candidate experience at the core? Contact our team today to see how we can help!