On this page
- Supporting a candidate quotes on: Candidate Experience Thinking
- Quotes on: Candidate-Focused Culture
- Quotes on: Candidate Service
- Quotes on: Candidate Focused Marketing
- Quotes on: Candidate-Focused Leadership
- Candidate Experience Playbook
Background to the ‘thought experiment’ on Candidate Experience
Search for “Candidate Experience” on Google and you will get in the region of 2.3M results. “Wow, that’s a lot!”
Yet do the same search for “Customer Experience” and you will 56x that amount – with a whopping 132,000,000 results delivered to you. Also, have a look at Google Search trends over the past 10 years and, this is what you will see. Overall, there is very little interest in “Candidate Experience” when compared to “Customer Experience”.
The same trend exists in books. Search Amazon for “Customer Experience” and there are over 1000 books written. However, if you do the same search for “Candidate Experience” and theres a pithy 20 books.
To borrow from our recent blog on The Two Big Reasons To Prioritise Improving Candidates’ Experience In 2024: 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. Thus, it’s all about the human and candidate experience.
Let’s take the best famous quotes on “customer experience” and change them to “candidate experience”.
What could we learn from that ‘thought experiment”? We borrowed Blake Morgan’s article in Forbes as a source. Some of these quotes should be read as if your full-time role is in Talent Acquisition.
These could provide a source of inspiration for your next retrospective or “Lessons Learnt” on Candidate Experience.
- Is there anything we’re doing well when it comes to candidate experience?
- Can we be doing anything better?
- What are we not doing that needs to start?
- Is there anything we’re doing that must be stopped?
Candidate Experience Thinking
“We see our candidates as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It’s our job every day to make every important aspect of the candidate experience a little bit better.” – Jeff Bezos
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett
“Candidate experience isn’t an expense. Managing candidate experience bolsters your brand.” – Stan Phelps
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
“The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.” – Mark Zuckerberg
“Make the candidate the hero of your story.” – Ann Handley
“Whatever you do, do it well. Do it so well that when people see you do it, they will want to come back and see you do it again, and they will want to bring others and show them how well you do what you do.” – Walt Disney
“If you don’t care, your candidate never will.” – Marlene Blaszczyk
“Loyal candidates, they don’t just come back, they don’t simply recommend you, they insist that their friends do business with you.” – Chip Bell
“Candidate experience better be at the top of your list when it comes to priorities in your organization. Candidate experience is the new marketing.” – Steve Cannon
“Building a good candidate experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.” – Clare Muscutt
“Exceptional candidate experiences are the only sustainable platform for competitive differentiation.” – Kerry Bodine
Candidate-Focused Culture
“Innovation needs to be part of your culture. Candidates are transforming faster than we are, and if we don’t catch up, we’re in trouble.” – Ian Schafer
“Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us.” – Earl Nightingale
“Your mission statement may be on the wall, but your core values are displayed in the attitudes of your employees.” – Elle Clarke
“So, get to know your candidates. Humanize them. Humanize yourself. It’s worth it.” – Kristin Smaby
“Treat each candidate as if they are the only one!” – Laurice Leitao
“The key is to set realistic candidate expectations, and then not to just meet them, but to exceed them—preferably in unexpected and helpful ways.” – Richard Branson
“Revolve your world around the candidate and more candidates will revolve around you.” – Heather Williams
“To earn the respect (and eventually love) of your candidates, you first have to respect those candidates.” – Colleen Barrett
“How you think about your candidate influences how you respond to them.” – Marilyn Suttle
“If people believe they share values with a company, they will stay loyal to the brand” – Howard Schultz
“You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
“Ease your candidates’ pain.” – Hazel Edwards
Candidate Service
“Your most unhappy candidates are your greatest source of learning.” – Bill Gates
“Courteous treatment will make a candidate a walking advertisement.” – J.C. Penney
“Good candidate service costs less than bad candidate service.” – Sally Gronow
“Candidate service is an opportunity to exceed your candidate’s expectations.” – John Jantsch
“It is so much easier to be nice, to be respectful, to put yourself in your candidate’s’ shoes and try to understand how you might help them before they ask for help, than it is to try to mend a broken candidate relationship.” – Mark Cuban
“Only once candidate service has become habitual will a company realize its true potential.” — Than Merrill
“Candidates don’t care about your policies. Find and engage the need. Tell the candidate what you can” – Alice Sesay Pope
“Here is a powerful yet simple rule. Always give people more than they expect to get.” – Nelson Boswell
“A lot of people have fancy things to say about candidates service, but it’s just a day-in, day-out, ongoing, never-ending, persevering, compassionate kind of activity.” – Christopher McCormick
“We have entered the era of the candidates. Today, providing candidates with outstanding candidate service is essential to building loyal candidates and a long-lasting brand.” – Jerry Gregoire
“Great candidate service doesn’t mean that the candidate is always right, it means that the candidate is always honoured.” – Chris LoCurto
Candidate Focused Marketing
“The first step in exceeding your candidate’s expectations is to know those expectations.” – Roy H. Williams
“Satisfied candidate is the best source of advertisement” – G.S. Alag
“Making candidate evangelists is about creating experiences worth talking about.” – Valeria Maltoni
“No amount of advertising can repair the damage done by failing to properly address a candidate’s concern.” – Albert Schindler
“Candidates who love you will market for you more powerfully than you can possibly market yourself.” – Jeanne Bliss
“If you want to be a good brand and have a value exchange with the candidate… you’ve got to have the listening mechanisms that can catch up to the candidate as well.” – Kelly Soligon
“People don’t just buy your products that they can see; they buy your attitude that they can sense” – Roxanne Emmerich
“Just having satisfied candidates isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.” – Ken Blanchard
“Happy candidates are your biggest advocates and can become your most successful sales team.” – Lisa Masiello
Candidate-Focused Leadership
“Service, in short, is not what you do, but who you are. It is a way of living that you need to bring to everything you do, if you are to bring it to your candidate interactions.” – Betsy Sanders
“Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’ – Brian Tracy
“Your candidate doesn’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Damon Richards
“When you serve the candidate better, they always return on your investment.” – Kara Parlin
“People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“If you work just for money, you’ll never make it, but if you love what you’re doing and you always put the candidate first, success will be yours.” – Ray Kroc
“Being in a curiosity mindset means being fascinated by your candidates and their reactions.” – Jake Knapp
“Treat the candidate like you would want to be treated. Period!” – Brad Schweig
“Never lose sight of candidates. Always be focusing on meeting their needs and expectations.” – Sue Duris
Candidate Experience Playbook 2024: 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. It is now straightforward to give great experiences at scale while also driving down costs and improving efficiencies.
Alas, the win-win is easily attainable. In the Sapia Candidate Experience Playbook, read how organisations are hiring with heart. All done by creating positive experiences for candidates while also decreasing the workload for the hiring team.
Related
Blog
Sapia.ai Wrapped 2024
It’s been a year of Big Moves at Sapia.ai. From welcoming groundbreaking brands to achieving incredible milestones in our product innovation and scale, we’re pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in hiring.
And we’re just getting started 🚀
Take a look at the highlights of 2024
All-in-one hiring platform
This year, with the addition of Live Interview, we’re proud to say our platform now covers screening, assessing and scheduling.
It’s an all-in-one volume hiring platform that enables our customers to deliver a world-leading experience from application through to offer.
Supercharging hiring efficiency
Every 15 seconds, a candidate is interviewed with Sapia.ai.
This year, we’ve saved hiring managers and recruiters hours of precious time that can now be used for higher-value tasks.
Giving candidates the best experience
Our platform allows candidates to be their best selves, so our customers can find the people that truly belong with them. They’re proud to use a technology that’s changing hiring, for good.
Leading the way in AI for hiring
We’ve continued to push the boundaries in leveraging ethical AI for hiring, with new products on the way for Coaching, Internal Mobility & Interview Builders.
Blog
Situational Judgement Tests vs. AI Chat Interviews: A Modern Perspective on Candidate Assessment
Choosing the right tool for assessing candidates can be challenging. For years, situational judgement tests (SJTs) have been a common choice for evaluating behaviour and decision-making skills. However, they come with limitations that can make the hiring process less effective and less inclusive.
AI-enabled chat-based interviews, such as Sapia.ai, provide organisations with a modern alternative. They focus on understanding candidates as individuals and creating a hiring experience that is both fair and insightful while enabling efficient screening and selection.
This shift raises important questions: Are SJTs still a tool that should be considered for volume hiring? And what do AI assessments offer in comparison?
1. The Static Nature of SJTs
Traditional SJTs use predefined multiple-choice questions to assess behavioural tendencies and situational knowledge. While useful for screening, these static frameworks lack the flexibility to adapt based on real-world performance data or evolving role requirements.
Once created, SJTs don’t adapt to new data or evolving organisational needs. They rely on fixed scenarios and responses that may not fully reflect the dynamic realities of modern workplaces, and as a result, their relevance may diminish over time.
AI-enabled chat interviews, on the other hand, are inherently adaptive. Using machine learning, these tools can continuously refine their models based on feedback from real-world outcomes such as hiring or turnover data. This ability to evolve ensures the assessments align with organisations’ needs.
2. Richer Data Through Open-Ended Responses
One of the main critiques of SJTs is their reliance on multiple-choice responses. While structured and straightforward, these options may not capture the full scope of a candidate’s thinking, communication skills, or problem-solving ability. The approach is often limiting, reducing complex human behaviour to a few predefined choices.
AI-enabled chat interviews work more holistically and dynamically. These tools provide a more complete picture of a person by allowing candidates to answer questions in their own words. Natural language processing (NLP) analyses their responses, offering insights into personality traits, communication skills, and behavioural tendencies. This open-ended format lets candidates express themselves authentically, giving employers a deeper understanding of their potential.
3. The Candidate Experience: Stressful or Supportive?
SJTs often include time constraints and rigid formats, which can create pressure for candidates. This is especially true when candidates feel forced to choose options that don’t fully reflect how they would actually behave. The process can feel impersonal, even transactional.
In contrast, chat-based interviews are designed to be conversational and low-pressure for candidates. By removing time limits and adopting a familiar chat interface, these tools help candidates feel more at ease. They also frequently include personalised feedback, turning the assessment into a valuable experience for the candidate, not just the employer.
4. Addressing Bias and Fairness
Traditional SJTs are prone to transparency issues, as candidates can often identify and select the “best practice” answers without revealing their true tendencies. Additionally, static test designs can unintentionally embed bias; due to the nature of the timed test, SJTs have been found to disadvantage some groups.
AI chat interviews, when developed ethically within a framework like Sapia.ai’s FAIR Hiring Framework, eliminate explicit bias by relying solely on the content of a candidate’s responses. Their machine learning models are continuously validated for fairness, ensuring that hiring decisions are free from subjective judgments or irrelevant demographic factors.
5. An Assessment That Improves Over Time
Workplaces are constantly changing, and hiring tools need to keep up. SJTs’ fixed nature can make them less effective as roles evolve or organizational priorities shift. They provide a snapshot but not a dynamic view of what’s needed.
AI-enabled chat interviews are built to adapt. With feedback loops and continuous learning, they incorporate real-world hiring outcomes—like retention and performance data—into their models. This ensures that assessments stay relevant and effective over time.
Rethinking Candidate Assessment
As hiring demands grow more complex, so does the need for tools that can capture the whole person, not just their response to hypothetical scenarios. While SJTs have played an important role in hiring practices, they are increasingly being replaced by tools like AI-enabled chat interviews.
These modern approaches provide richer data, adapt to changing needs, and create a richer and more engaging experience for candidates. Perhaps most importantly, they emphasise fairness and inclusivity, aligning with the growing demand for unbiased hiring practices.
For organisations evaluating their assessment tools, the question isn’t just which method is “better.” Understanding the specific needs of your roles, teams, and candidates will help you choose tools that help you make decisions that are both informed and equitable.
Blog
Keeping Interviews Real with Next-Gen AI Detection
It’s our firm belief that AI should empower, not overshadow, human potential. While AI tools like ChatGPT are brilliant at assisting us with day-to-day tasks and improving our work efficiency, employers are increasingly concerned that they’re holding candidates back from revealing their true, authentic selves in online interviews.
As an assessment technology provider, we are responsible for ensuring the authenticity and integrity of our platform. That’s why we’re thrilled to unveil the latest upgrade to our flagship Chat Interview: the AI-Generated Content Detector 2.0. With groundbreaking accuracy and a candidate-friendly design, this innovation reinforces our mission to build ethical AI for hiring that people love.
Artificially Generated Content (AGC) is content created by an AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Pi. We initially rolled out the first version of our AGC detector last year and have continued to improve it as our data set has grown and these AI tools have evolved.
What’s New?
Our updated AGC Detector 2.0 achieves an impressive 98% detection rate for AI-assisted responses, with a false positive rate of just 1%. This gives organisations peace of mind that they’re getting the most authentic assessment of every candidate.
This cutting-edge system builds on Sapia.ai’s proprietary dataset of over 2 billion words, derived from more than 20 million interview question-answer pairs spanning diverse roles, industries, and regions. It’s trained on real-world data collected before and after the release of tools like ChatGPT, ensuring it remains robust and reliable even as AI tools evolve.
The Challenge of AI in Chat-based Interviews
Our data shows that around 8% of candidates use tools like GPT-4 to generate responses for three or more interview questions. While these tools may offer a quick way for candidates to complete their interview, they can inadvertently hide a person’s true personality and potential – qualities our customers are most interested in understanding through our platform. In fact, research from Sapia Labs shows that these tools have their own personality traits, which may be quite different from the candidate applying for the role.
For Candidates: Enabling Authenticity
When a response is flagged as potentially AI-generated, the system doesn’t disqualify candidates. Instead, a real-time warning pops up, allowing them to revise their answers or submit them as-is. This ensures that candidates are encouraged to present themselves authentically, reflecting their unique communication styles and sharing their genuine experiences.
For Hiring Teams: Actionable Insights
Responses flagged as AI-generated are highlighted in the candidate’s Talent Insights profile, accessible via Sapia.ai’s Talent Hub or ATS integrations. These insights give hiring teams the transparency to make informed decisions, fostering trust while accelerating hiring timelines.
Built on Unmatched AI Interview Expertise
“Our detection model’s strength lies in its foundation of real-world interview data collected from diverse roles and regions,” says Dr Buddhi Jayatilleke, Sapia.ai’s Chief Data Scientist. This depth of understanding enables the AGC Detector to maintain its industry-leading accuracy – even when candidates subtly modify AI-generated answers to appear more human.
Why This Matters
The AGC Detector 2.0 embodies Sapia.ai’s commitment to ethical AI that amplifies human potential. As our CEO Barb Hyman explains:
“The hiring landscape has fundamentally changed since ChatGPT, but our commitment remains clear: AI should amplify human potential, not penalise it. This breakthrough fosters authentic hiring conversations. Our real-time warning system helps candidates make better choices and gives enterprises confidence in their selection decisions.”
Testing and Validation of the AGC Detector 2.0
The new detector has been rigorously tested on over 25,000 interview responses generated by humans and leading AI models like GPT-4, Claude-3.5, and Llama-3. The results speak for themselves, reinforcing the reliability and fairness of this game-changing technology.
Fairness & Transparency in AI-Enabled Hiring
By detecting AI-generated content while allowing candidates to correct their responses, our AGC Detector 2.0 ensures every applicant has the chance to put their best, most authentic foot forward when applying for a role powered by Sapia.ai. For enterprises, it provides confidence in the integrity of their hiring decisions and ensures they’re connecting with real candidates at scale.