Why are we still talking about candidate experience as we head into 2020? Because it’s still broken! Despite all the recruitment and media attention focused on the jobseeker these days, the state of the candidate experience in many organizations can be summed up by four letters: FCDD.
FCDD is a four-letter mnemonic created by CX and UX strategist Debbie Levitt to represent what she calls the Four Horsemen of Bad CX: frustration, confusion, disappointment and distraction. These four horsemen represent candidate exasperation: four emotions that candidates emit when they attempt to interact with your company website and application. These four horsemen almost single-handedly crush the engagement of up to 9 out of 10 candidates who want to work for you, but quit before applying.
Before offering common examples of the Four Horsemen of Bad CX™, let me define candidate experience. Too often companies believe that the candidate experience (CX) journey starts after a candidate applies for a role at your company. But it actually begins long before that and includes every interaction, passive or active, between you and the candidate.
Often ignored but critical touch points include your career site’s mobile-friendliness, page speed, responsiveness, the colors you use, your navigation, the feel and mood of your brand, your applicant workflow, buttons, menus, errors, voice commands, and even employee and customer reviews. It encompasses your job listings, your applicant tracking system and job application, your response to candidates, and the speed of that response. It also includes the interview, the preparation of your hiring managers and on-boarding. Each of these touchpoints are vulnerable to the Four Horsemen of Bad CX and therefore present an opportunity to beat your competition—or risk disengaging candidates.
Fortunately, many of the fixes for bad CX are low-hanging fruit, requiring little or no budget and minimal expertise or resources. Here are some of the most blatant examples of bad CX I’ve seen over the past year—and how to fix them.