Perception is reality. When a job candidate gains a positive perception about a company’s brand through their interactions with the hiring teams, that perception becomes reality in the form of an acceptance of an offer, word of mouth, or shared on social platforms.
When the experience isn’t positive, people will hear about it. Candidates share their experiences in Interview Reviews on Glassdoor or in speaking with friends and family. This has a strong impact on a company’s brand.
At Western Union, we are passionate about creating favorable experiences for our candidates. Whether they receive offers, or are politely declined during their application lifecycle, our global Talent Acquisition team strives to ensure each person that “walks through our doors” knows we value their time and respect one’s pursuit of bettering their career.
For the second year in a row, we are excited to be a recipient of the Talent Board’s 2018 Candidate Experience Award for the Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) region! In addition, we have added the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to our list of accolades for the first time since participating in these awards!
To qualify for a Candidate Experience Award, a company must conduct an extensive evaluation of its recruitment process and practices impacting the candidate experience. We conduct a survey of our candidates in which we must meet a minimum number of qualification responses, with a minimum percentage of those candidates having not received an offer.
Previous job candidates rate companies across four areas and must have provided exemplary ratings in:
- Overall candidate experience,
- Likeliness to apply again,
- Likeliness to refer others, and
- Willingness to increase their business relationship with the employer via applying again, referring others and making purchases when applicable.
In connecting with our Talent Acquisition leaders around the world, I learned about the importance of these awards and our approach to the Western Union candidate experience.
Laura Callaghan, EMEA Talent Acquisition Senior Manager, (pictured center) had the opportunity to speak on the panel at the EMEA CandE Gala awards in London and I asked her to share what the team has been most proud of regarding the improvements to the candidate experience over the last year.
“In the EMEA region, we’ve increased both the number and experience level of our recruiters. With their tenured backgrounds, the quality of conversations with our candidates have drastically improved. This, combined with our focus on decreasing the number of requisitions each team members manages, affords them more time spent seeking and speaking with the most qualified candidates. Given our globally minded approach, we make effective use of our technology tools to increase our talent pool.
Sagar Jawade and Kathleen Licup, Talent Acquisition Managers in India and the Philippines respectively, share their global perspectives.
Sagar: “To receive our first CandE award in the APAC region is both exciting and motivating at the same time. The biggest contributor to this achievement is our team’s conscious effort and mission to extend a “WOW” experience to our candidates. This includes our recruiter providing timely information throughout the candidates recruiting journey as well as involving our business stakeholders to stay connected with their candidates between offer and start date, which is 2-3 months for India. This garners confidence and reassurance with the future employee, allowing candidates to ask clarifying questions about their start, the scope, the skill stack, etc., even before their first official day. With the hyper-competitive markets of today, where many job seekers are considering multiple offers, keeping them engaged and connected with your organization even before they join, is a key to helping drive commitment and a strong rapport with future employee. The teams at Western Union do this beautifully!”
Kathleen attended the virtual gala for APAC, sharing her highlights from the event: “The first highlight was re-affirming our belief that communication, regardless of the channel, is still one of the most vital factors to helping ensure a great candidate experience. From applying AI to our communications with candidates via “Apps” or as simple as personalizing emails, each create a bigger impact in how an applicant perceives a potential employer. Additionally, one of the panelists shared that they have been able to create predictive data/risk index for job offers, which they have used to help “predict” which candidates are more likely to accept job offers. This methodology has made them change how they approach a candidate and the strategy they use to encourage candidate offer acceptance.”
James Stirling, Director of Global Talent Acquisition emphasizes, “Western Union is honored to be named Candidate Experience Award recipients in both EMEA and APAC! As we march through 2019, we will continue to put candidates at the forefront of our global hiring process.
We have several initiatives in place to help support our candidate experience strategy: leveraging the feedback received through the CandE evaluation and other feedback channels; hiring managers and business partners to make ongoing improvements to our processes; growing our global team members and capabilities to drive our business goals thoughtfully; increasing our employer brand positioning across key markets to build awareness and drive candidate applications; and increasing our investments so that our sourcers, recruiters, and operations team have the best-in-class hiring technology and tools to attract and engage with top talent for Western Union.
With updated processes come changes—sometimes extreme—to the way we work, so I want to extend a big thank you to each member of our global talent acquisition team. Your dedication is what makes our candidate experience the best it can be. With all the exciting initiatives happening this year, we cannot wait to see how our efforts pay off through the future feedback we receive from our candidates!”