What's Your Exerience

Recently, I heard a colleague talking about the customer experience. He had nine customer experience imperatives that he thought every company should practice.  I couldn’t help but draw the comparison between the customer experience and the candidate experience. So many of these imperatives apply to HR, especially in our roles of attracting the best talent to our organizations. Let's take a look at some of these imperatives.

Personalized and tailored experiences. It's no longer a one-size-fits-all world in many respects.  There are a great deal of tools and differing technologies that help us source and attract candidates to our organization. Custom tailor experiences for your candidates as you would for your customers. It’s the platinum rule rather than the golden rule that’s important. We’re not all alike, so treat other people the way they want to be treated not the way you want to be treated. For example, communicate with candidates using the media that they prefer and use and not the media with which you’re most comfortable. This means varying communication methods as well as sourcing methods. Know where to find your ideal candidate.

Provide advice and learning opportunities. Be a curator of information. For example, through blogs and white papers on your website, or through LinkedIn, share information about what your organization or industry is doing. Use storytelling to share facts and antidotes. Give people something to talk about. Get candidates excited about your company so they’ll want to work for you.

Be a part of their journey. Remember the job search is not just one experience at a time but rather it's the path that the candidate takes from the time they start exploring new opportunities to when they come to work for you. Their journey is made up of a countless string of experiences that relate to you: how they first heard about you, what their first visit to your website was like, what they may have learned about you on social media, their first interaction with someone from your company, what the interview was like – from the time they parked their car to when they met their potential future boss.  These are all part of their experience. Make sure their journey is a positive one.

Engaged employees. Consider the individual a candidate will meet when they first set foot into your organization – their future colleagues. If you have an engaged and friendly workforce it’s going to show – no shine – through to the candidate. Consider the story I heard recently from a young man pursuing his teaching certificate. On a visit to a local school to complete an assignment for his studies, he was blown away by the people he met. Students and faculty walking down the hall greeting him in a friendly manner – “Hi, how’s it going? Can I help you? Hey, who are you – welcome to the school.” It’s certainly a place he’d like to work.

Neither HR nor talent management work in a silo in their organizations. All the departments and parts of the organization work together and can learn lessons from each other. A business model that is built around positive experiences is a win for everyone!