Why Your Company Should Be Asking for Feedback About Your Hiring Process

When was the last time you took a good, hard look at your hiring process?

If it’s been more than a few years, then you’ve probably been operating behind the industry standard without even knowing it. Technology is rapidly changing job seeker expectations for your hiring team. The question is no longer whether job seekers have the right skills, but rather, are you providing a framework for them to show their skills off?

This article will outline why collecting interview feedback is important and outline four simple things you can do to start. 

Why is interview feedback important, anyway?

Everyone can benefit from feedback. Constructive criticism is how we grow and evolve outside of our comfort zones. The same can be said about your business. Unless you’re opening yourself up to receive feedback from job seekers, you will never know which areas of your hiring process could be improved. Here’s a quick look at three big reasons you need a feedback system for your hiring process. 

The job market is increasingly favoring job seekers over employers

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably noticed the increasingly candidate-favored job market. The latest reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the unemployment rate at just under five percent, with the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs to seek out new roles steadily on the rise. 

Job seekers no longer have to put up with lengthy recruiting cycles designed to make them jump through hoops. There are other opportunities out there. And with many job seekers leaning into personal branding and creating their own side-hustles, they are relying less on traditional nine-to-five jobs. This is just an added layer of competition you’re facing in the pursuit of great job candidates. 

Job seekers avoid companies with bad hiring practices

There’s a very good chance that your hiring and recruiting processes are committing a cardinal sin without you even knowing it. And you’ll continue to stay in the dark unless you do something about it.

There’s a multitude of things you could be doing to drive job seekers away unintentionally. Prolonged hiring timelines, excessive hoops to jump through (like pre-interview personality tests and assessments), and even the communication between your team and a candidate can all lead to people dropping out of the recruitment pipeline. 

Here are some quick stats about why candidates might abandon job prospects: 

• 89% of potential candidates drop out of the recruitment process due to a prolonged timeline
• 52% of job seekers said the number one frustration during the job search is the lack of response from employers
• 53% of job seekers want expectations for the job clearly explained in the job description

If you’re not working to continually tweak your recruiting pipeline to be more candidate-friendly, you’ll find yourself being ghosted by job candidates. This can happen at any point in the process, with some companies reporting new hires that don’t show up on their first day. It’s becoming increasingly common for job seekers to simply avoid conflict and disappear, leaving your team wondering where things went wrong. 

And if candidates ghosting you isn’t scary enough, consider all the candidates who won’t even bother applying in the first place. 54% of Gen Z job seekers and 50% of millennials will not apply for a role if they think your recruiting methods are outdated.

Feedback from job candidates makes your process better

Collecting feedback about your interview process is important because it gives you an objective look at what it’s like to apply for a job with your company from an unbiased perspective. These people have been on the other side of your recruitment process, and it would be foolish not to use that to your advantage. 

Your team should be collecting feedback from both new hires and people who chose not to pursue employment with your company. Asking for feedback is about finding the good and the bad within your process. Companies often make the mistake of over-correcting when a problem arises, which just leads to more of a mess. It’s just as important to pinpoint what is working with your recruiting strategy as it is to figure out what can be improved — whether that’s how video conferencing interviews are conducted or how your recruiters communicate with candidates.

How to collect hiring process feedback

Understanding why interview feedback is an important first step. Implementing feedback collection is a bit trickier. The good news is that there are a few tricks you can use to ensure you get it right. This is just a sampling of what you can do when creating your interview feedback process. Remember to tweak these suggestions to fit your business. 

Use the resources available to you

You can start collecting interview feedback right now with this one simple trick – paying attention.

With the advent of social media monitoring, survey software, and review sites, it’s never been easier to collect feedback about your company. The internet allows candidates to tell everyone exactly what they thought of your interview process—whether or not you’re paying attention.

You need to be involved when conversations are happening about your company. That means regularly monitoring your third-party employer reviews and taking the time to see what people are saying on websites like Glassdoor. 

Browsing the interviews tab will give you a look into candidates’ thoughts on your process, the difficulty of their interview, and whether or not they accepted the job. You can also get a high-level snapshot of how positive or negative the experience was overall. 

Third-party reviews are such a valuable resource because you can be certain you’re getting honest feedback. The anonymity of Glassdoor makes people comfortable enough to share their true feelings in a way that a targeted survey might not. 

Fully embrace your haters and detractors

The trickiest part of this process is embracing criticism — but it’s easily the most important thing you can do. While it might be a tough pill to swallow, your haters will actually benefit you the most in the long run. Keeping an active eye on your online reputation can help you make changes, starting today.

Listen to the core of the feedback hidden behind the negative review. What is the root of the problem that’s making them upset enough to tell others about their bad experience? 

Collect the negative feedback and create a list of everything mentioned. Is there a pattern forming around certain complaints? If so, that’s a sign you’re dealing with a bigger problem. Once you’ve pinpointed the patterns, reorder the list starting with the most impactful things to fix — and then start fixing!

You can improve the interview process immediately by starting with a few small changes within your immediate control. Those minor tweaks will improve your candidate experience exponentially while you get to work on the bigger issues that take time to untangle. 

Streamline with survey software

Glassdoor and social media aren’t the only places you can go for interview feedback. Directly reaching out to people you’ve interviewed and hired is another important step. This will help you open up your response pool and get answers from people who might not have felt compelled to leave a third-party review.

Many companies use survey software for this part of the process. What makes survey software so popular for collecting feedback is the ability to automate emails. Automation takes the administrative work away from your employees so they can analyze all the data from email deliverability to how satisfied applicants were with communication speed. 

You can also use survey software to segment lists to send different surveys to different people, including: 

• People who only made it to the phone screen
• People who made it to the first round
• People who made it to the second round
• People who made it to the final round and didn’t get the job
• People who made it to the final round and got hired

This segmentation allows you to pinpoint problems at different stages of the interview process. A candidate who got bumped in the first round might have different feedback than someone who only made it to the phone screen. This will give you a better look at the process as a whole.

Remember, none of it matters without actionable change 

We’ve just scratched the surface on how candidate feedback can transform your hiring process. At the end of the day, you can set SMART goals all you want, but if you don’t take action after compiling feedback, nothing will happen. Don’t be content to send out a quarterly survey and call it a day. Your competition is improving everyday, so you should too.