To find out how to improve candidate experience using Recruitment Automation, we have a great eBook on candidate experience.
Hiring with heart is good for business: candidate experience in C-19 times. Sapia launches its Candidate Experience eBook. This book provides an insight into the changing face of the candidate experience and sheds light on the candidate experience meaning in today’s context.
If there was ever a time for our profession to show humanity for the job searchers, that time is now. Unemployment in Australia has passed a two-decade high. The trend is similar for other countries. That means there are a lot more candidates in the market looking for work.
With so many more candidates, the experience of a recruiting process matters more. What are candidates experiencing? Are they respected, regardless of whether they got the job or not? Is their application appreciated? Are they acknowledged for that?
This is where improve candidate experience initiatives come into play.
Here are two big reasons to prioritise improving candidates’ experience:
There is a much higher value attached to it – both for candidates and your organisation.
This story won’t be unfamiliar to you: An Australian based consulting firm, possibly in need of a candidate experience consultancy, advertised for a Management Consultant and decided to withdraw the advert after 298 candidates had applied. That was during their candidate experience day in the first week of advertising.
When candidate supply outstrips demand, that is bound to happen. Inundation of your Talent Acquisition team becomes an everyday thing. Employers are feeling swamped with job applications. Being effective is much harder when there are more candidates to get through every day.
High-volume recruiting issues become further aggravated when two additional dynamics come into play:
>> When the role for which you are hiring requires a relatively low skill level.
In the example provided above, the Management Consultant role had several essential requirements that should have limited applications in the context of high-volume hiring. Included in the applicant list were hoteliers, baristas, waiting staff, and cabin crew (it’s heartbreaking). So, when it comes to roles with a much lower barrier to entry, the application numbers can quadruple.
The traditional ‘high-volume low-skill role’ has now become excruciatingly high-volume. This trend is being seen across recruitment for roles like customer service staff, retail assistants and contact centre staff.
>>When your organisation is a (well-loved) consumer brand.
Frequently, candidates will apply to work for brands that they love. Fans of Apple products, work for Apple. They also apply to work and get rejected in their millions. So, how do you keep people as fans of your brand when around 98% of them will be rejected in the recruiting process? That’s not only a recruiting issue – it’s a marketing issue too.
Thousands of organisations and their Talent Acquisition teams are grappling with both dynamics right now.
The combination of unemployment and being in Covid-19 lockdown means that consumer buying is being impacted. Their confidence is down. Buying is also down. With people applying for more jobs and spending less as consumers, the hat has somewhat switched. For many who were consumers, they have now become candidates. That may be how they are currently experiencing your brand. As candidates first, customers second.
If customers are candidates and candidates are customers, is there a reason for their experience to be fundamentally different?
Candidate experience is defined as the perception of a job seeker about an organisation and their brand based on their interactions during the recruiting process. Customer experience is the impression your customers have of your brand as a whole throughout all aspects of the buyer’s journey.
Is there a difference? It’s all about how the human feels when interacting with your brand. A person is a person, regardless of the hat they are wearing at the time!
All about the human experience.
Millions, even billions, of dollars are spent each year by organisations crafting a positive brand presence and customer experience. Organisations have flipped 180 degrees to become passionately customer-centric. It makes sense to do so. Put your customers first, and that goes straight to the bottom line.
What is perhaps less recognised is the loss of revenue and customer loyalty which is directly attributed to negative candidate experiences.
How about those loyal customers who want to work for your brand? They eagerly apply for a job only to get rejected.
2.Candidate Experience improvements have become super easy to implement.
For those who have tried in the past, you may well know that it can take an extraordinarily long time to ‘define’ a Candidate Experience strategy, create its metrics, find a budget and then execute on it.
Have a look inside the ‘too hard’ basket and there you may well find many thousands of well-meaning ‘candidate experience’ initiatives, that are still lying dormant! So many want to focus on candidate experience, but may shy away from doing so. This is because it’s perceived as time-consuming and expensive.
Plus, right now there is so much on which CHROs need to focus. From ensuring workers’ wellbeing to enabling remote working. Who has the time to also worry about the experiences of candidates?
However, that has changed. Boosting candidate experience is no longer too hard, too expensive, nor too time-consuming. Technology becomes more manageable, quicker and cheaper over time. Also (borrowing from Moore’s law), its value to users grows exponentially.
Candidate Experience Playbook: Hire with Heart
The good news is that for those organisations who genuinely want to improve candidate experience, it has become much easier to do so. Finally, it is possible to give great experiences at scale while also driving down costs and improving efficiencies.
Win-win is easily attainable. In the Sapia Candidate Experience Playbook, read how organisations are hiring with heart. All by creating positive experiences for candidates while also decreasing the workload for the hiring team.
Related
Blog
Mirrored diversity: why retail teams should look like their customers
Walk into any store this festive season and you’ll see it instantly. The lights, the displays, the products are all crafted to draw people in. Retailers spend millions on campaigns to bring customers through the door.
But the real moment of truth isn’t the emotional TV ad, or the shimmering window display. It’s the human standing behind the counter. That person is the brand.
The missing link in retail hiring
Most retailers know this, yet their hiring processes tell a different story. Candidates are often screened by rigid CV reviews or psychometric tests that force them into boxes. Neurodiverse candidates, career changers, and people from different cultural or educational backgrounds are often the ones who fall through the cracks.
And yet, these are the very people who may best understand your customers. If your store colleagues don’t reflect the diversity of the communities you serve, you create distance where there should be connection. You lose loyalty. You lose growth.
We call this gap the diversity mirror.
What mirrored diversity looks like
When retailers achieve mirrored diversity, their teams look like their customers:
- A grocery store team that reflects the cultural mix of its neighbourhood.
- A fashion store with colleagues who understand both style and accessibility.
- A beauty retailer whose teams reflect every skin tone, gender, and background that walks through the door.
Customers buy where they feel seen – making this a commercial imperative.
How to recruit seasonal employees with mirrored diversity
The challenge for HR leaders is that most hiring systems are biased by design. CVs privilege pedigree over potential. Multiple-choice tests reduce people to stereotypes. And rushed festive hiring campaigns only compound the problem.
That’s where Sapia.ai changes the equation: Every candidate is interviewed automatically, fairly, and in their own words.
- Bias is measured and monitored using Sapia.ai’s FAIR™ framework.
- Outcomes are validated at scale: 7+ million candidates, 52 countries, average candidate satisfaction 9.2/10.
- Diversity can be measured: with the Diversity Dashboard, you can track DEI capture rates, candidate engagement, and diversity hiring outcomes across every stage of the funnel.
With the right HR hiring tools, mirrored diversity becomes a data point you can track, prove, and deliver on. It’s no longer just a slogan.
Retail recruiting strategies in action: the David Jones example
David Jones, Australia’s premium department store, put this into practice:
- 40,000 festive applicants screened automatically
- 80% of final hires recommended by Sapia.ai
- Recruiters freed up 4,000 hours in screening time
- Candidate experience rated 9.1/10
The result? Store teams that belong with the brand and reflect the customers they serve.
Read the David Jones Case Study here 👇
Recruiting ideas for retail leaders this festive season
As you prepare for festive hiring in the UK and Europe, ask yourself:
- How much will you spend on marketing this Christmas?
- And how much will you invest in ensuring the colleagues who deliver that brand promise reflect the people you want in your stores?
Because when your colleagues mirror your customers, you achieve growth, and by design, you’ll achieve inclusion.
See how Sapia.ai can help you achieve mirrored diversity this festive season. Book a demo with our team here.
FAQs on retail recruitment and mirrored diversity
What is mirrored diversity in retail?
Mirrored diversity means that store teams reflect the diversity of their customer base, helping create stronger connections and loyalty.
Why is diversity important in seasonal retail hiring?
Seasonal employees often provide the first impression of a brand. Inclusive teams make customers feel seen, improving both experience and sales.
How can retailers improve their hiring strategies?
Adopting tools like AI structured interviews, bias monitoring, and data dashboards helps retailers hire fairly, reduce screening time, and build more diverse teams.
Blog
The Diversity Dashboard: Proving your DEI strategy is working
Why measuring diversity matters
Organisations invest heavily in their employer brand, career sites, and EVP campaigns, especially to attract underrepresented talent. But without the right data, it’s impossible to know if that investment is paying off.
Representation often varies across functions, locations, and stages of the hiring process. Blind spots allow bias to creep in, meaning underrepresented groups may drop out long before offer.
Collecting demographic data is only step one. Turning it into insight you can act on is where real change and better hiring outcomes happen.
What is the Diversity Dashboard?
The Diversity Dashboard in Discover Insights, Sapia.ai’s analytics tool, gives you real-time visibility into representation, inclusion, and fairness at every stage of your talent funnel. It helps you connect the dots between your attraction strategies and actual hiring outcomes.
Key features include:
- Demographic filters – Switch between gender, ethnicity, English as an additional language, First Nations status, disability, and veteran status. View age and ethnicity in standard or alternative formats to match regional reporting needs.
- Representation highlights – Identify the top five represented sub-groups for each demographic, plus the three fastest-growing among underrepresented groups.
- Track trends over time – See month-by-month changes in representation over the past 12 months, compare to earlier periods, and connect the data back to your EVP and attraction spend.
- Candidate experience metrics – Measure CSAT (satisfaction) and engagement rates by demographic to ensure your hiring process works for everyone. Inclusion is measurable.
- Hiring fairness – Compare representation in your applied, recommended, and hired pools to spot drop-offs. Understand not just who applies, but who progresses — and why.
From insight to action
With the Diversity Dashboard, you can pinpoint where inclusion is thriving and where it’s falling short.
- See if your EASL candidates are applying in high numbers but not progressing to live interview.
- Spot if candidates with a disability report high satisfaction but have lower offer rates.
- Track the impact of targeted campaigns month-by-month and adjust quickly when something isn’t working.
It’s also a powerful tool to tell your success story. Celebrate wins by showing which underrepresented groups are making the biggest gains, and share that progress with boards, executives, and regulators.
Built on science, backed by trust
Powered by explainable AI and the world’s largest structured interview dataset, your insights are fair, auditable, and evidence-based.
Measuring diversity is the first step. Using that data to take action is where you close the Diversity Gap. With the Diversity Dashboard, you can prove your strategy is working and make the changes where it isn’t.
Book a demo to see the Diversity Dashboard in action.
Blog
Neuroinclusion by design. Not by exception.
Why neuroinclusion can’t be a retrofit and how Sapia.ai is building a better experience for every candidate.
In the past, if you were neurodivergent and applying for a job, you were often asked to disclose your diagnosis to get a basic accommodation – extra time on a test, maybe the option to skip a task. That disclosure often came with risk: of judgment, of stigma, or just being seen as different.
This wasn’t inclusion. It was bureaucracy. And it made neurodiverse candidates carry the burden of fitting in.
We’ve come a long way, but we’re not there yet.
Shifting from retrofits to inclusive-by-design
Over the last two decades, hiring practices have slowly moved away from reactive accommodations toward proactive, human-centric design. Leading employers began experimenting with:
- Sharing interview questions in advance
- Replacing group exercises with structured simulations
- Offering a variety of assessment formats
- Co-designing assessments with neurodiverse candidates
But even these advances have often been limited in scope, applied to special hiring programs or specific roles. Neurodiverse talent still encounters systems built for neurotypical profiles, with limited flexibility and a heavy dose of social performance pressure.
Hiring needs to look different.
Insight 1: The next frontier of hiring equity is universal design
Truly inclusive hiring doesn’t rely on diagnosis or disclosure. It doesn’t just give a select few special treatment. It’s about removing friction for everyone, especially those who’ve historically been excluded.
That’s why Sapia.ai was built with universal design principles from day one.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- No time limits — Candidates answer at their own pace
- No pressure to perform — It’s a conversation, not a spotlight
- No video, no group tasks — Just structured, 1:1 chat-based interviews
- Built-in coaching — Everyone gets personalised feedback
It’s not a workaround. It’s a rework.
Insight 2: Not all “friendly” methods are inclusive
We tend to assume that social or “casual” interview formats make people comfortable. But for many neurodiverse individuals, icebreakers, group exercises, and informal chats are the problem, not the solution.
When we asked 6,000 neurodiverse candidates about their experience using Sapia.ai’s chat-based interview, they told us:
“It felt very 1:1 and trustworthy… I had time to fully think about my answers.”
“It was less anxiety-inducing than video interviews.”
“I like that all applicants get initial interviews which ensures an unbiased and fair way to weigh-up candidates.”
Insight 3: Prediction ≠ Inclusion
Some AI systems claim to infer skills or fit from resumes or behavioural data. But if the training data is biased or the experience itself is exclusionary, you’re just replicating the same inequity with more speed and scale.
Inclusion means seeing people for who they are, not who they resemble in your data set.
At Sapia.ai, every interaction is transparent, explainable, and scientifically validated. We use structured, fair assessments that work for all brains, not just neurotypical ones.
Where to from here?
Neurodiversity is rising in both awareness and representation. However, inclusion won’t scale unless the systems behind hiring change as well.
That’s why we built a platform that:
- Doesn’t rely on disclosure
- Removes ambiguity and pressure
- Creates space for everyone to shine
- Measures what matters, fairly
Sapia.ai is already powering inclusive, structured, and scalable hiring for global employers like BT Group, Costa Coffee and Concentrix. Want to see how your hiring process can be more inclusive for neurodivergent individuals? Let’s chat.