[1-minute insight]
We live in a digital world where a poor candidate experience is easily shared at the touch of a button. The impact of this can damage your organisation’s reputation through the online ‘Naming & Shaming’ culture.
And that is going to hurt!
I have previously touched on why the human negativity bias influences how and why candidates respond to and share a negative experience online.
As unpleasant as the practice of ‘naming & shaming’ is, it’s sadly not going anywhere soon.
A poor candidate experience can cost an organisation revenue because those candidates can also be customers. They may apply to a company because they believe in the brand, their products and services. A negative experience can destroy their perception of the brand and as such, they’ll likely stop buying!
Not only will they stop buying, they’ll actively discourage friends, family and anyone reading about their negative experience on their socials from buying too.
A particularly disgruntled candidate can fast become the antidote to a brand ambassador…a brand bushwacker. Virgin Media discovered this in 2014.
Virgin Media conducted some internal research, including analytics, which revealed one fifth of their rejected candidates were also their customers. They calculated that if there were 123,000 rejected candidates each year and 6% cancelled their monthly subscription and switched providers, they’d have almost 7,500 cancellations. If they multiplied this by their £50 monthly subscription over 12 months, the annual cost would be around £4.5 million.
Whilst this example may seem extreme, it’s still pretty sobering. It certainly was for Virgin Media who realised, quick-smart, they needed to turn this around and start treating their candidates a lot better!
Samantha Lynne
I help business owners & hiring managers streamline candidate interviews to make right-first-time hires for the long-term.