The Value of a Transparent CX in Remote Recruitment

Candidate experience has always been an important part of the talent acquisition process, but it has become even more crucial as recruiting today is frequently handled remotely. Without face-to-face interactions, employers must carefully craft a candidate experience that will reflect the business’s genuine culture and leave candidates with a positive impression. 

A majority (68%) of candidates believe that the way a company treats applicants during the recruiting process reflects the way the company treats its employees, according to this survey. The pandemic has accelerated remote recruiting, so it’s important for talent acquisition managers to understand how they can best utilize technology to create a candidate experience that will give applicants a transparent view of their workplaces.  

Most tech professionals such as developers and engineers are accustomed to working collaboratively, and they value feedback, peer reviews, and opportunities to speak up and share their input. 

Even when you’re using a remote recruiting process, you can distinguish your company by creating a candidate experience that is transparent and easy, providing opportunities for fun communication with applicants, and exposing your engineering DNA in the process.

Building Blocks of a Transparent Candidate Experience

Developing a remote-first candidate experience that will offer transparency and openness requires a few important standards. Start by making sure you include these four components in your remote hiring process.

1. Set expectations. You’re more likely to attract the right candidates if you provide clear expectations from the beginning. That means your job descriptions and position postings should help candidates understand what your organization is looking for. Throughout the remote recruiting process, continue to set the right expectations with each candidate based on their skills and matching assumptions. 
2. Communicate your commitment to DE&I. Make it clear that your organization is committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. That may mean you publicly report on DE&I figures, require inclusivity training for new hires and current employees, practice “blind testing”, and open up your search to include all areas of diversity, including (but not limited to) ethnicity, gender, age, disability, and geography.
3. Provide visibility. Candidates are often kept in the dark when it comes to the hiring process. In fact, the majority of job applicants say that employer response time is what they’d most like to see improved in the hiring process. Make sure your process offers candidates insight into the next steps and timelines they can expect.
4. Ensure consistency. Candidates should be able to expect the same basic hiring process from your company, regardless of which location or team they’re hoping to join. You can make the process more consistent by implementing tools and systems that can be easily used across the organization. For example, tools like CodeCheck allow you to design role-specific skills tests for all roles, programming languages, and frameworks.
5. Provide access. The drawback to a remote hiring process is that candidates don’t get to experience the workplace in person, so make sure your hiring process includes access to your team and culture, to help the candidate experience your DNA and mission. 

Software Tools Create Transparency

Once you’ve committed to including the building blocks of a transparent candidate experience, the next step is determining how to implement each one into your process. Fortunately, various tech tools are available to streamline your remote hiring process and to integrate the components that will make that process transparent, simple, and fun for candidates.

A hiring platform like CodeCheck allows you to quickly screen candidates for the exact skills you’re looking for, and remove unconscious bias from the hiring process. 

To help candidates provide their best work during the hiring and interviewing process, look for coding tests and tools that allow for top-tier editing. For example, Codility offers advanced code editing with Microsoft Monaco, which is known for its modularity, performance, flexibility, and support for plug-ins that allow each developer to customize the editor to their own needs and work style. 

When you integrate tech tools like these into your hiring process, it’s easy for hiring managers in all departments and locations to replicate the same experience for each candidate, ensuring consistency.

And if you need to screen many developers simultaneously or increase your candidate pool, you can host a code challenge. These online events can be used as part of the hiring process, or as a fun way to gain the attention of passive candidates, allowing developers a chance to show off their best work in a fun online environment.

Remote recruiting is here to stay, but it doesn’t have to involve a murky, impersonal candidate experience. Instead, by taking time to build a transparent and authentic remote hiring process, you can ensure a positive candidate experience that will help create buzz about your company and drive top talent to your organization. 

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