We agree with Katrina Collier: Recruitment isn’t broken, per se. It needs a bit of work, sure, but in the midst of the Great Resignation, dedicated talent acquisition managers all over the world are doing some of their best work. They’re finding top talent and helping businesses succeed.
Despite this, we can say that candidate experience is certifiably broken. Ghosting rates are up somewhere around 450% since the start of the pandemic. 65% people say they rarely receive notice of their application status (Lever), and 60% of people say they have bailed on a job application due to its length or complexity.
Why candidate experience is important
Many mid-to-large sized companies spend in excess of $200,000 per year on sourcing and advertising (assuming a hiring rate of fifty people per year). Few invest in candidate experience. We tend to overlook the fact that the candidate journey from application to offer (or rejection) is just as important for the health of a recruitment funnel, over the long term, as good ads or recruitment strategies.
Good candidate experience, put simply, is your best chance at securing the talent you want. In the wake of the Great Reshuffle, employees have the power to choose when and where they work, and they know it. If you can’t reach them and woo them in a reasonable time frame, you’re at a supreme competitive disadvantage. They’re here today, gone tomorrow. That means that multi-round interview funnels and tedious psychometric games aren’t going to cut it anymore. Today’s candidate wants speed, perks, and flexibility. Your experience should be designed with this in mind.
There are a lot of ways candidate experience might be improved – this article offers some tips, including advice on a term we like to call the Gucci principle.
One easy place to start is with your job ads.
How to write a good job ad
Good job ads are concise and well-formatted. They put employee value proposition up front. They discuss the vision and purpose of a role, and not just day-to-day responsibilities. They avoid the term ‘competitive salary’ – in fact, they disclose salary ranges. They’re not necessarily short, either. Anyone who tells you that a job ad must be short to be good does not understand the anatomy of an advertisement.
Here are our top tips.
1. Make sure the spelling and grammar in your job ad is perfect, throughout
This seems like a minor point, but good spelling, grammar, and sentence structure is essential for your employer brand. It’s a matter of perception. Poor writing casts doubt on the legitimacy of your brand, and on your capabilities in general – after all, if you can’t write a clean job ad, how can the candidate be sure you can do other, more important things, correctly?
Have someone in your marketing team cast their eye over your ad before it goes out. Proof-reading should always be a part of your customer outreach. If you don’t have a marketer on which to rely, consider investing in editing software like Grammarly.
2. Keep the unique language of your brand
Funky company names are in vogue. Just look at ours. Because we’re called Sapia, we refer to our team (and even our customers) as Sapians. Therefore, we do the same with our job ads. It creates branding consistency, and works as an unconscious primer, suggesting to candidates that they’re joining a well-knit, stable, and purpose-oriented team.
The same goes for language. If you’ve adopted or created certain words to make your brand stand out, they should also be used to make your job ad stand out. Look at this example from Gong: They tell the candidate that they’ll be creating edu-taining content. That’s a lot more interesting than “you’ll be writing content that is both educational and entertaining.” Had they chosen the latter sentence, you’d doubt their credibility, because that sentence is not remotely entertaining.
Or take this example from one of our own job ads. You might say that using a curse word (oh dear me!) in a job ad is inappropriate, but we don’t. We’re Sapians, and that makes us passionate humans. We understand that writing the way you speak is the quickest way to build rapport. Tell us that you don’t get that impression from this paragraph.
3. Clear categorisation and formatting of sections
A job ad doesn’t need to be short, but it should be formatted for scanning. Candidates should be able to easily read it, extract the main points, and make the call to apply, all within minutes. We like the following job ad section structure:
- Perks and benefits
- Responsibilities
- Qualifications
Each section can be as long as you need it to be (within reason), but it should also be set out in dot points. Easier to read, easier to digest. Many are the job ads that set out position duties and benefits in great big walls of text. Go with dot points, like Gong has, and you’ll stand out.
4. Make it as easy as possible to apply
Depending on the platform you use, it can be difficult to control how candidates enter your funnel. Regardless, you can make it easier by clearly sign-posting the action you expect them to take. If it’s a LinkedIn EasyApply button, great – but don’t confuse candidates by asking them, at the bottom of the ad, to email their CVs to you. This happens a lot.
Make sure you have a single call-to-action, and make it clear. Add it to the top and bottom of your ad.
You know what they say about first impressions? That’s why it’s so critical to get your job ads right. Check out this post on LinkedIn for more tips on writing the perfect job ad.
Related
Blog
The AGC Debate: Are AI-Written Interview Answers a Red Flag or Smart Strategy?
Every day, we read stories of increased fake or AI-assisted applications. Tools like LazyApply are just one of many flooding the market, driving up applicant volumes to never-before-seen levels.
As an overwhelmed hiring function, how do you find the needle in the haystack without using an army of recruiters to filter through the maze?
At Sapia.ai, we help global enterprises do just that. Many of the world’s most trusted brands, such as Qantas Group, have relied on our hiring platform as a co-pilot for better hiring since 2020.
Our Chat Interview has given millions of candidates a voice they wouldn’t have had – enabling them to share in their own words why they’re the best fit for the role. To find the people who belong with their brands, our customers must trust that their candidates represent themselves. Thus, they want to trust that our AI is analysing real human answers—not answers from a machine.
The Rise of GPT
When ChatGPT went viral in November 2022, we immediately adopted a defensive strategy. We had long been flagging plagiarised candidate responses, but then, we needed to act fast to flag responses using artificially generated content (‘AGC’).
Many companies were in the same position, but Sapia.ai was the only company with a large proprietary data set of interview answers that pre-dated GPT and similar tools: 2.5 billion words written by real humans.
That data enabled us to build a world-first:- an LLM-based AGC detector for text-based interviews, recently upgraded to v2.0 with 99% accuracy and a false positive rate of 1%. An NLP classification model built on Sapia.ai proprietary data that operates across all Sapia.ai chat interviews.
Full Transparency with Candidates
Because we value candidate trust as much as customer trust, we wanted to be transparent with candidates about our ability to detect artificially generated content (AGC). As an LLM, we could identify AGC in real time and warn candidates that we had detected it.
This has had a powerful impact on candidate behaviour. Since our AGC detector went live, we have seen that the real-time flagging acts as a real-time disincentive to use tools like ChatGPT to generate interview responses.
The detector generates a warning if 3 or more answers are flagged as having artificially generated content. The Sapia.ai Chat Interview uses 5 open-ended interview questions for volume hiring roles, such as retail, contact centre, and customer service, and 6 questions for professional roles, such as engineers, data scientists, graduates, etc.
Let’s Take a Closer Look at the Data…
We see that using our AGC detector LLM to communicate live with candidates in the interview flow when artificial content has been detected has a positive effect on deterring candidates from using AI tools to generate their answers.
The rate of AGC use declines from 1 question flagged to 5 questions – raising the flag on one question is generally enough to deter candidates from trying again.
The graph below shows the number of candidates, from a total of almost 2.7m, that used artificially generated content in their answers.
Differences in AGC Usage Rate by Groups
We see no meaningful differences in candidate behaviour based on the job they are applying for or based on geography.
However, we have found differences by gender and ethnicity – for example, men use artificially generated content more than women. The graph below shows the overall completion ratios by gender – for all interviews on the left and for interviews where the number of questions with AGC detected is 5 or more on the right.
Perception of Artificially Generated Content by Hirers.
We’re curious to understand how hirers perceive the use of these tools to assist candidates in a written interview. The creation of the detector was based on the majority of Sapia.ai customers wanting transparency & explainability around the use of these tools by candidates, often because they want to ensure that candidates are using their own words to complete their interviews and they want to avoid wasting time progressing candidates who are not as capable as their chat interview suggests.
However, some of our customers feel that it’s a positive reflection of the candidate, showing that they are using the tools available to them to put their best foot forward.
It’s a mix of perspectives.
Our detector labels it as the use of artificially generated content. It’s up to our customers how they use that information in their decision-making processes.
This concept of having a human in the loop is one of the key dimensions of ethical AI, and we ensure that it is used in every AI-related hiring product we build.
Interested in the science behind it all? Download our published research on developing the AGC detector 👇
Research Paper Download: AI Generated Content in Online Text-based Structured Interviews
Blog
Joe & the Juice Partners with Sapia.ai, Scaling an Exceptional Candidate Experience and Cutting Time to Hire
Read the full press release about the partnership here.
Joe & the Juice, the trailblazing global juice bar and coffee concept, is renowned for its vibrant culture and commitment to cultivating talent. With humble roots from one store in Copenhagen, now with a presence in 17 markets, Joe & The Juice has built a culture that fosters growth and celebrates individuality.
But, as their footprint expands, so does the challenge of finding and hiring the right talent to embody their unique culture. With over 300,000 applications annually, the traditional hiring process using CVs was falling short – leaving candidates waiting and creating inefficiencies for the recruitment team. To address this, Joe & The Juice turned to Sapia.ai, a pioneer in ethical AI hiring solutions.
A Fresh Approach to Hiring
Through this partnership, Joe & The Juice has transformed its hiring process into an inclusive, efficient, and brand-aligned experience. Instead of faceless CVs, candidates now engage in an innovative chat-based interview that reflects the brand’s energy and ethos. Available in multiple languages, the AI-driven interview screens for alignment with the “Juicer DNA” and the brand’s core values, ensuring that every candidate feels seen and valued.
Candidates receive an engaging and fair interview experience as well as personality insights and coaching tips as part of their journey. In fact, 93% of candidates have found these insights useful, helping to deliver a world-class experience to candidates who are also potential guests of the brand.
“Every candidate interaction reflects our brand,” Sebastian Jeppesen, Global Head of Recruitment, shared. “Sapia.ai makes our recruitment process fair, enriching, and culture-driven.”
Results That Matter
For Joe & The Juice, the collaboration has yielded impressive results:
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33% Reduction in Screening Time: Pre-vetted shortlists from Sapia.ai’s platform ensure that recruiters can focus on top candidates, getting them behind the bar faster.
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Improved Candidate Satisfaction: With a 9/10 satisfaction score from over 55,000 interviews, candidates appreciate the fairness and transparency of the process.
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Bias-Free Hiring: By eliminating CVs and integrating blind AI that prioritizes fairness, Joe & The Juice ensures their hiring reflects the diverse communities they serve.
Frederik Rosenstand, Group Director of People & Development at Joe & The Juice, highlighted the transformative impact: “Our juicers are our future leaders, so using ethical AI to find the people who belong at Joe is critical to our long-term success. And now we do that with a fair, unbiased experience that aligns directly with our brand.”
Trailblazing for the hospitality industry
In an industry so wholly centred on people, Joe & the Juice is paving the way for similar brands to adopt technology that enables inclusive, human-first experiences that can reflect a brand’s core values.
If you’re curious about how Sapia.ai can transform your hiring process, check out our full case study on Joe & The Juice here.
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.