One of the defining traits of empathy is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. But, when it comes to your company’s hiring process, have you put yourself in your candidates’ shoes? If you haven’t, you don’t know what their candidate experience is.

How is your company supposed to improve candidate experience if it doesn’t know what’s involved?

Here are four things you never knew are part of candidate experience.

1. Communication

Here’s a shocking statistic: Only two percent of job applicants get an interview. Even more shocking? Ninety-eight percent never even hear back from the company! Communication is a critical part of the candidate experience.

Your company should communicate with its candidates throughout every step of the hiring process. From follow-up emails through interview agendas and job offers, it’s important to keep in touch.  

2. Online Reviews

Is your company actively engaging with positive—and negative—online reviews? If not, it’s hurting your candidate experience. Seventy percent of Gen Zers look at online reviews before making any career decision. And if your company isn’t publicly responding to feedback, it’s most likely not reading the feedback. That’s not encouraging for candidates.

And it prompts another serious question: How can your company solve candidate experience problems that it doesn’t know exist?    

3. Interview Training

Your company’s team is one of its greatest assets and selling tools. But if they don’t know how to properly conduct an interview, they become a liability. Imagine if you’re a candidate, and the interviewer is asking questions that don’t have any connection to the job or your previous experience.

Here are three important aspects of interview training:

• Make sure all employees involved have read the job description and understand the position and your company’s needs.
• Provide your employees with a guide for interview questions.
• Give a list of interview basics to follow such as being punctual and friendly.

4. Branding

Company culture is a big attraction for candidates. If candidates don’t feel like they’re a good fit for your culture, they won’t want to work at your business. So if your branding isn’t effectively showcasing your company culture, your ability to attract quality candidates will suffer.

And it all starts with the job description. Remember that word choices in your job descriptions can impact candidate experience. Using words like “ninja,” “rockstar,” or “guru” can give candidates the impression that your company is a boys-club, according to Media Bistro.

It’s not the only area where branding matters, though. Social media is an effective branding tool to showcase your company culture to job seekers. Candidates can follow you on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks to get a glimpse of how your company promotes creativity, innovation, and teamwork. And it can keep them informed of any new developments at your company.

Once your company chooses candidates it’d like to interview, it needs to communicate in a timely manner (as we mentioned above) with branded messaging. To keep everything consistent, make sure your emails include your logo and follow brand standards (like its colors, font, etc.).

If any of these four things haven’t been addressed by your company, you need to rethink your approach immediately. At the end of the day, your candidate experience is too important to not know what affects it.