Do you survey your Applicants?

Yesterday Willliam Uranga posted an interesting article on his Talent Alchemy blog that raised the following question :

'How much do you embrace what your candidates have to share?'

I thought it was an excellent question, and coincidentally ties in with some discussions (frustrating ones to be fair); I have had lately with some folks that see the corporate ATS as a system for internal users, and not truly as a customer-facing system.

The ATS, at least the job listing, and online application portions of it, really are more customer systems than internal corporate systems. What the applicants and visitors do with the system, how they interact with the pages, and overall how they evaluate your application process is critically important information, and should not only be gathered, but carefully analyzed and acted upon.

But as William suggests, do most organizations really listen to applicants and job site visitors? Do they formally, or even informally ask candidates what they really thought of the ATS, the process, the quality and frequency of communication, the complexity of the system, and their overall impressions of the application experience.

If you care to, please take a second to answer the poll question below, I am interested to know if my experiences fit with what you are seeing with your organization.

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

The candidates are your customers.  You are trying to 'sell' them your company and your opportunities.  A part of the package that you are selling, and often their first meaningful interaction with your company is your corporate job site and your ATS.

Shouldn't we be asking them what they think?

Comments

[William Uranga]

Steve, thanks for the kind mention. I just remembered we do ask people, when they apply, what their favorite TV shows are (yeah, its a TiVo-thing). If we can do that, we could certainly give them the option/opportunity to comment on the company's products/services. This could be in lieu of a phone screen or interview question - but there is just something about asking them live and/or in person, so I'm going to have to think more about this. Great post!

[Steve]

Thanks William for the comments and for the original question that set me off to write the post. I attempted to get the HR group to include a link to an online survey in the 'Thanks for applying' auto-response that we use, but for some reason they were not interested. It is so simple to ask the candidates what they think, that is shocks me that more companies do not bother. Thnaks Again!