As a senior SAP project manager and co-inventor of mapertunity, I’ve hired hundreds of SAP consultants. One of my biggest challenges was managing the candidate pipeline. Candidate journey mapping changed that. This article will show you how it can transform your organization’s hiring process too.
We’ll discuss current candidate journey mapping and glimpse into the future role of automation and AI. Whether you’re a job seeker or hiring manager, understanding this process offers valuable insights. In today’s job market, understanding the candidate’s perspective is more important than ever.
Table Of Contents:
- What is Candidate Journey Mapping?
- Why Map the Candidate Journey?
- Building Your Candidate Journey Map
- Using Your Candidate Journey Map
- FAQs about candidate journey mapping
- Conclusion
What is Candidate Journey Mapping?
Candidate journey mapping details every interaction a candidate has with your company. It starts from their first impression and ideally ends on their first day. It visually represents how candidates move through your hiring process.
This goes beyond simply tracking applicants. Candidate journey mapping involves understanding candidate experiences, feelings, and how HR and recruitment can improve the process. This improves the overall process involved in talent acquisition. A positive work environment improves employee engagement.
Why Map the Candidate Journey?
A candidate journey map simplifies complex recruitment. This makes hiring faster and more cost-effective. It also provides valuable data about each stage of the process. Journey mapping recognizes the unique complexities of each company and role.
Boosting Your Employer Brand
A positive candidate experience strengthens your employer brand. Candidates prefer companies known for positive hiring processes. 72% of job seekers share bad candidate experiences, impacting your potential talent pool.
A good candidate experience is the first step in candidate retention. Strong employer branding begins with a well-defined recruiting process.
Improving Recruitment Marketing
Understanding where candidates drop off helps refine your recruitment marketing strategy. Do you lose quality candidates during application forms, assessments, or interviews? Journey mapping pinpoints areas for improvement.
Gaining Valuable Insights
Seeing your process from the candidate’s perspective provides valuable insights. Are applications too long or job descriptions unclear? Simplifying job applications and improving the candidate experience can greatly increase hiring.
Building Your Candidate Journey Map
While general candidate journey stages exist, each candidate’s path is unique. The typical stages are awareness, consideration, application, and selection/hiring. These stages vary significantly, offering unique touchpoint candidate insights into your process.
However, commonalities exist within each stage. Candidate journey mapping can also reveal areas where automation might boost efficiency and provide personalized candidate communication. Focusing on awareness consideration early on makes for an effective hiring process from the start.
Define Your Ideal Candidate (Candidate Persona)
Start by defining your ideal candidate persona. This clarifies who you’re looking for, which ultimately saves time. Think about their background, career path, performance management style, and current working setup.
Outline the Candidate Journey Stages
Break down each stage into specific touchpoints, from application received to when the candidate starts:
- Awareness: How do candidates find your company? Common channels include job boards, social media, and employee referrals. This is the first touchpoint candidate.
- Consideration: What information do candidates research? They may look at company reviews, benefits, culture, work environment, and career development opportunities.
- Application: Create a smooth, user-friendly process to avoid drop-offs. Many job seekers abandon complex applications, leading to candidate drop-off rates that can greatly impact the talent management function of a business.
- Selection: This includes screening, interviews, and the final hiring decision. Many candidates don’t receive feedback after applying. Make each interaction meaningful and look at things from the candidates’ shoes.
- Hire: The process isn’t over once a candidate accepts. Ensure a seamless transition from selection to onboarding and job offer stage. Positive work goes a long way here. Offer valuable insights at each step so the new employee can feel supported as they get integrated into your company. Having great skills intelligence at this step will give HR an idea on where to help train the new candidate. Help candidates see you support ongoing learning through this new role.
- Onboarding: A strong onboarding process reinforces everything discussed during the hiring process. It’s an opportunity to evaluate and refine your process based on the candidate experience.
Pinpoint Touchpoints and Channels
List every candidate interaction (touchpoint) and where it occurs (channel) for each stage. This might be your career site, a job board, or social media platforms. These interactions are all related to your business as a company’s employer, even if done off your site.
Visualize the Journey
Create a simple visual map, such as a flowchart. This illustrates the path from awareness to hire. This visual representation shows you the full candidate journey stages from initial job board searching to selection to hire and even onboarding where applicable.
Using Your Candidate Journey Map
A candidate journey map is a dynamic tool for improving hiring, not just a static document.
Analyze and Iterate
Continuously review your map and gather candidate feedback. Address any issues and make necessary adjustments to enhance the candidate experience; improve the job description to more clearly and succinctly tell potential applicants about the role and the company. For example, if qualified candidates abandon the application process due to complexity, streamline the application forms and related application materials.
Refine and Improve
Candidate journey mapping is an ongoing process. Adapt your map as you learn more and the recruiting landscape evolves. Focus on improving candidate experience, optimizing recruitment marketing, and building a strong employer brand.
FAQs about candidate journey mapping
What is a candidate journey map?
Awareness Consideration Application Selection Hire Workflow
Clear Structure and Progression
To ensure a smooth and efficient process, it is essential to clearly label each step within the workflow. This will provide a crystal clear structure on what happens, how the candidate progresses, and help identify any bottlenecks or inefficiencies.
Key Benefits
- Easily track candidate progression
- Identify lags or inefficiencies in the process
- Optimize the workflow for better results
The Workflow
The following steps outline the awareness consideration application selection hire workflow:
- Awareness
- Initial contact or introduction to the candidate
- Candidate becomes aware of the job opportunity
- Consideration
- Candidate expresses interest in the job opportunity
- Initial screening and evaluation of the candidate
- Application
- Candidate submits their application
- Review and evaluation of the candidate’s application
- Selection
- Shortlisting of candidates
- Interviews and assessments
- Hire
- Job offer to the selected candidate
- Onboarding and integration of the new hire
Monitoring and Improvement
Regularly review and analyze the workflow to identify areas for improvement. This will help refine the process, reduce lags, and increase efficiency.
What are the 4 stages of journey mapping?
Four common stages include:
- Understanding your target candidate.
- Charting the current journey.
- Identifying pain points and gaps.
- Brainstorming improvements. Adapting customer journey mapping frameworks used in digital marketing can be beneficial in this stage. You may even wish to make improvements on steps such as optimizing how well your application is working for the various roles, since some will lend better towards being posted to one or another specific job board, or you may just keep things to your site, such as open position listings only.
What is employee journey mapping?
Similar to candidate journey mapping, employee journey mapping focuses on the employee experience after hiring. It maps their journey within the company, from onboarding to ongoing professional development. Performance management processes here become critical touchpoints so be sure to account for them. A performance management system or software would fit in nicely at this stage.
What is member journey mapping?
Member journey mapping charts experiences within membership organizations. It focuses on how members join, engage, and remain active. This is akin to marketing to buyers in consumer sales.
Conclusion
Candidate journey mapping is an invaluable tool for optimizing your hiring process. It provides clarity, control, and a candidate-centric approach to recruitment. By understanding the candidate experience from awareness to hire (and beyond), you can improve recruitment marketing, strengthen your employer brand, and achieve better hiring outcomes. As someone who’s experienced the challenges of ineffective systems firsthand, I can attest to the transformative power of candidate journey mapping.
It fosters organic hiring, encouraging positive reviews and feedback. This continuous improvement loop ensures your recruitment process remains effective and engaging for everyone involved. Candidate journey mapping should lead to improvements for your recruitment team while improving the candidate experience to help make the journey smoother for each applicant and help those who did not pass in each step feel positive about their interactions, which will have the added bonus effect of improving your company reputation amongst the job seekers on their preferred job boards and increase quality candidates. Having quality candidates enter the funnel can improve the work environment and will do much towards positive work being performed as well, due to your team members being more qualified for their specific position, they feel positive about what they’re working on. Make a journey map today to greatly improve each experience candidate.
