Successful hiring managers and recruiters know that the recruiting market can swing between two extremes: an employer’s market or a candidate's market. Regardless of where the market currently is, your organization should look to improve the candidate experience wherever possible. Use these four quick tips to create a better candidate experience that will ultimately help you win better talent in this competitive market.

Have you ever been in the market for a new home? Even first-time home shoppers are familiar with the two main cycles of real estate: buyer’s markets and seller’s markets. The pendulum seems to constantly swing between these two extremes, each offering potential challenges and advantages to either those seeking a new home, or those trying to sell theirs.

The same holds true for the recruiting market. There are employer’s markets and candidate markets, depending upon several factors. Right now, America is in the middle of a candidate’s market. There are far more organizations with open positions than there are qualified candidates to fill them.

This means that candidates are, more than ever, in the driver’s seat in these relationships. With a bevy of options for them to choose from, an organization must work harder than ever to differentiate themselves and gain a candidate’s interest and trust. In short, if you want to hire better talent, the candidate experience provided throughout the recruiting process must be unparalleled.

Think your candidate experience could use a few tweaks? Try these four quick fixes to better engage and delight talented candidates.

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1. Make Candidate Discovery Easier

Candidates are taking control over nearly every step in the recruiting process, including actively seeking out opportunities and evaluating company and opportunity fits. Make it easier for your desired candidates to find this information to accurately gauge whether they want to pursue a relationship with your company.

Create an engaging career page on your website that accurately describes your company’s mission, values, culture, and job opportunities.

Make sure you show as well as tell. Photos, videos, and video interviews with executives and current employees are great tools to help candidates get a full picture of what it is like to work for your company. Additionally, use these videos and photos on your LinkedIn profiles and other digital properties that you want candidates to visit.

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2. Hold Pre-Interviews to Save Candidate and Hiring Manager Time

When it comes to recruiting, speed is everything. It takes the average organization 25 work days to fill an open position. In this candidate-driven market, 25 days is too long for a highly-desired candidate. Speed up your recruiting with brief, informal interviews to quickly vet whether this candidate is a good organizational and positional fit to save both hiring manager time and to speed up first contact for the prospect.

Even recorded video questionnaires can help you quickly evaluate whether you want to move forward with a candidate. This saves the hiring manager time and offers a quick decision for candidates so they know whether to move on or to invest more time in your organization’s process.

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3. Nurture Relationships with Current and Future Candidates

Some candidates might be great organizational fits, but not the right fit for the open position you’re actively recruiting for. Creating talent pools of pre-vetted candidates can make your recruiters more productive.

But in order to use these pools effectively, you must actively communicate and nurture these “not right now” candidates. Create a talent community, or dedicated nurture communication paths to keep in touch with these candidates, and keep them interested in your organization for a later opportunity.

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4. Check Your Candidate Communication

Effective, proactive communication and candidate marketing is an important element throughout the entire employee lifecycle, but is critically important when working with a job candidate. Actively update the candidate at every stage of the recruiting process. Often, you can set up triggered, automated messages when candidates reach certain stages or complete specific actions.

However, if you have bad news, deliver it over the phone. If candidates took the time to come in to your organization to interview, then it's worth your time to pick up the phone and tell them that they aren’t advancing. Remember, candidates now have more power than ever to share their candidate experiences with other job seekers. So use every opportunity at your disposal to make a positive, lasting impression on candidates.

These are just four small ways that you can affect a candidate’s experience with your hiring organization for the better.

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