Marie Norman: Give Good People (Candidate) Experience with the 3 C's. Concede, Create, Consistency

People are your company’s most valuable asset. Yet the interview process is riddled with actions to support otherwise. 

Common Transactional Interview practices like pre-tests, hurdles, hoops, and ghosting do not attract people. In fact, they repel great people. The truth is, people will judge your company on how you make them feel! … not the offer you present to them.

Today’s Quote:

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” 

– Warren Buffett

Guest Bio:

Marie Norman is the Director of Talent Acquisition for Adobe. She leads the Corporate Functions team which includes Global Marketing, Finance, Employee Experience, Legal and Corporate Strategy. 

Marie brings diverse and innovative industry experience leading and building scalable talent acquisition teams and HR programs in the areas of Talent Attraction and Acquisition, Workforce Planning, Career Development and Coaching, Candidate Experience, Employment Branding, and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging. 

Her passion lies in motivating, coaching and building successful recruiting teams, employment branded story-telling and delivering a unique, memorable and delightful Candidate Experience to all. She is also an Adjunct Professor with the College of Business at San Jose State University.

Show Highlights: 

• What is “Candidate Experience”
• Things that are downgrading your stock in the marketplace
• A Process to drive GREAT candidate experience

What is  “candidate experience”? 

• Candidate experience
• The attraction is more about relationship

Challenges facing today

• Managers can no longer play a passive role. 
• Managers disengaged
• Don't realize they need to be involved
• The ability of the recruiter to continue to market the company for future roles
• People Fall through the cracks as the process evolves. 
• When the candidate is not a top pick, things fall through the cracks and the relationship goes sour
• Companies Missing out on quality hires because of quickness. 
• Quantifiable metrics
• Candidate experience scorecard
• Explain the position
• Time to follow up
• Overall experience
• Hiring manager alignment with the role
• *** Stats for success between hiring managers
• Alignment between the manager & recruiter

Rick’s Input:

• Transactional Mindset
  • Out of sight, out of mind
  • Give closure
• Talent double standard
• Miss-judge talent 

How people feel determines how they perform. The purpose of every interview is to get to the truth of who a person is by gathering evidence to support making an accurate decision. 

Ingredients for good candidate Experience

• How to give a good candidate experience
• Define who plays what part.
• Recruiter owns the first part
• hand off
• Hiring manager takes over
• Others- interview scheduler, hr admin, systems, career page, job ad itself - technology-driven, ATS systems - non-human elements 

Process

• Easy submittal/application process
• Tracking system
• Communications set up immediately after application- within 24 hours
• Taking action
• Establishing a timeline. 
• Final disposition
• Interview or rejection- communication 
• Final communication- honor commitment to respond back

Rick’s two cents

• Communicate! 
• Be approachable, break  down barriers, hurdles
• Be creative: call people who the system screened out. 

Key Takeaways:

• CONCEDE that the Candidate Experience is a crucial part of your recruiting strategy
• CREATE your plan and communicate/train participants on their roles
• CONSISTENCY - be sure to be consistent and repeat the process for every candidate every time!