Why Asking for Feedback is Better than Waiting for Them

The importance of asking for feedback lies in the simple fact that meeting candidate expectations are not easy when you don’t know what they are in the first place. In the staffing world, how well you deliver against those expectations will play a part in your recruitment brand reputation. They influence how candidates perceive the quality of your recruitment services and how well you can reach your goals. 

Candidate perceptions will become spoken opinions on candidate experience. The reality is, it’s not a question of “if” but of “when.” This is especially true for negative experiences, with a survey showing that approximately 69% of candidates will leave a negative review online. Candidates are your customers, and they won’t shy away from letting their thoughts known. So asking for feedback is a basic but brilliant strategy that actually lets you get ahead of the game and catapult your recruitment services from good to great. 

Asking for Feedback is the Missing Link to Strengthening Your Recruitment Brand Reputation.

Feedback is a powerful tool that staffing firms have yet to fully take advantage of. When utilized properly, it can unlock various benefits that can boost your brand reputation, improve your candidate experience, and increase your talent pipeline. 

Let’s take a look at some of them. 

1. It can help you identify blind spots and course-correct faster. 

As recruiters, you’re always on the managing end of the application. Though you do your best to ensure that no stone is left unturned in delivering the best candidate experience for every applicant, some inefficiencies or mistakes can sometimes happen right under your nose. These blind spots, big or small, can be costly to your reputation as negative online reviews suddenly pop up somewhere on the internet. 

By proactively capturing candidate feedback, you can avoid surprises and fix mistakes before they grow into bigger problems. Setting up a candidate feedback loop at important touchpoints in the candidate experience will help you gather the insights you need to measure the effectiveness of your recruitment process. It also helps you course-correct potential weaknesses using data-driven strategies to deliver the best candidate experience possible. 

2. It makes you more in control of your online reputation. 

The thing about candidate feedback is that it will always come, and you can’t control what will be in it. In fact, 72% of candidates who have negative experiences will talk about them on review websites, their peers, and professional circles. With 57% of job candidates steer clear of companies with negative online reviews, you can’t just leave your reputation in the hands of your applicants. You need proper feedback management to get feedback yourself and use it to your advantage. 

Intentionally asking for feedback will help you regain control of your reputation in two ways: damage control and social proof.  

• Damage control: Remember what we said about capturing their feedback in specific interactions? That’s the optimal way to damage control—providing immediate solutions so you can redeem their experience. Your prompt action can become a testament to your excellence as a staffing firm, redeem their bad experience, and even turn it into a winning testimony. 

• Social Proof: Asking for feedback will help you consolidate a lot of positive feedback faster. These are the reviews that you use in conjunction with your recruitment marketing strategies to attract more candidates. Testimonials are one of the most effective ways to boost your brand reputation because they’re first-hand opinions of your previous candidates. You can highlight them on your website, social media accounts, and professional platforms. 

So, instead of just waiting for reviews to show up online, take control of your online reputation and proactively ask for feedback. 

3. It can build good relationships with your candidates. 

It’s no secret that recruitment is a relationship, yet many companies still miss out on valuable opportunities when it comes to strengthening ties with their candidates. Research shows that almost 71% percent of candidates who were not asked to provide feedback gave a 1-star rating, while 39% who were sent candidate experience surveys gave 5-star ratings. 

These statistics only show that asking for feedback goes beyond just preventing negative publicity; it can help build good relationships with your candidates whether they get hired or not. Every time you ask for their opinion and act upon them, it shows them that you’re serious about making sure they have a good candidate journey and that you care about what they think. This can effectively put the human touch of your brand forward and help develop positive perceptions of your brand. 

4. It can help you stay on track with your recruitment goals. 

Because candidate feedback is essentially a great source of helpful information, it can be valuable in helping you measure metrics like your response rate and source of hire, which are important in keeping candidate engagement high and your talent pipeline continuously growing.  

On top of this, it also provides a great way to monitor recruiter performance and measure their recruitment services against candidate expectations. You can foster a more accountable culture by tracking which practices should be replicated and which ones should be improved. As you do this, you help your recruiters know what to do exactly to deliver stellar candidate experience and great career matches. 

Asking for Feedback is Made Easy with an Experience Management Platform.

Why ask for feedback manually when you can implement convenient, automated feedback management through Great Recruiters?  

Using our experience management platform, you can put the worry of unpleasant surprises behind you. We’ll automatically collect feedback from every candidate and consolidate them into real-time reports that you can use to optimize your recruitment services. Best of all, Great Recruiters turns positive reviews into testimonials that you can easily share with your website and social media accounts. 

Protecting your recruitment brand reputation doesn’t need to be a tedious and lengthy process. Enjoy easy feedback management that helps you get ahead of the game.

Request a demo now.