Providing a great candidate experience can no longer be seen as a ‘nice to have’ for organisations. Rather, it is a fundamental requirement with far-reaching implications, as this white paper reveals. The IBM Smarter Workforce Institute explored the candidate experience of more than 7,000 recent job applicants. The findings provide deep insights into the importance of candidate experience not only in terms of hiring outcomes, but also with respect to employer reputation and even potential sales.

Perspectives of when candidate experience begins and ends may vary across organisations, but our research shows that the experience is influenced by a multitude of interactions candidates may have with the hiring organisation. Some of these interactions occur even before prospective candidates decide to apply for a job.