PHILADELPHIA—-Phenom today released its State of Candidate Experience: 2023 Benchmarks Report. Phenom’s seventh annual audit revealed that since 2020, the Fortune 500 has made significant strides to enhance the candidate experience by implementing AI technology and automation to connect job seekers — both hourly and knowledge workers — with relevant jobs faster, and creating engaging content to convey a strong employer brand in the highly competitive U.S. talent market.
The report highlights improvements Fortune 500 companies have made in the last three years to deliver hyper-personalized experiences and job matching that strengthen candidate attraction, engagement and conversion, including a:
- 250% increase in presenting job recommendations based on browsing history
- 150% increase in the use of AI-powered chatbots
- 145% improvement in easy site navigation
- 87% increase in displaying recently viewed jobs
- 74% increase in video content
- 50% increase in well-written job descriptions
Although organizations are increasingly adopting AI-powered technology, 89% scored poorly in their use of AI, indicating there is still a significant gap between the solutions available and what companies have implemented. According to the 2023 audit:
- 86% did not present job recommendations based on browsing history
- 85% did not use chatbots
- 85% did not display recently viewed jobs
- 84% did not provide job recommendations based on candidate profile
- 80% lacked compelling content on their career sites
“Multiple industries remain in a hiring crisis with open roles costing them millions, and enhancing the candidate experience is the first step to addressing this issue,” said Mahe Bayireddi, CEO and co-founder of Phenom. “Providing personalized experiences for job seekers is only possible through intelligence and automation.”
The ROI of Intelligence, Automation and Experience
The future of every company no longer hinges on its ability to outpace competitors for talent — employers must embrace cutting-edge practices and technology for hiring, developing and retaining employees. Intelligence, automation and experience are essential to overcoming today’s biggest talent acquisition and retention challenges, including simplifying the job search process and maintaining an attractive, unique employer brand.
For hourly workers, automating hiring workflows reduces friction throughout every step of the hiring process, ensuring organizations can attract, engage and hire faster and more efficiently. For knowledge workers, intelligence brings highly personalized, contextually relevant information to enhance productivity and output. Technology such as hyper-personalized career sites, conversational chatbots, automated screening and scheduling, and content that showcases a company’s culture all enrich the candidate experience — helping them find the right job and apply faster.
Savvy organizations that are leveraging AI-powered technology and automation through the Phenom Intelligent Talent Experience platform are attracting more best-fit job seekers, growing talent communities and increasing completed applications, and the results speak for themselves:
- A major telecommunications company increased career site traffic by 220% and increased completed applications by 700% with intelligent tools that provided a more personalized experience for candidates
- A major health care organization achieved a 10% increase in nursing hires by expediting communication with candidates through a conversational chatbot and SMS messages
- A major financial institution added 8X more candidates to their talent community by creating a dynamic, hyper-personalized career site and targeting recruitment marketing efforts
- A popular restaurant chain registered over 12,000 candidates through their career site and talent email campaigns in less than a month — resulting in more than 2,000 same-day offers to candidates and 1,300+ same-week hires
- A leading retail chain hired 7,000 workers in two weeks using their AI-powered chatbot, career site, CRM and video assessments to automate routine, early stage hiring practices — reducing time to hire from weeks to 8 hours
Actions Organizations Can Take to Accelerate Hiring
To improve the candidate experience, Phenom’s State of Candidate Experience report prescribes a series of actions organizations can take — from creating strong employer brand content to implementing intelligent career site technology:
- Personalize the candidate experience through AI and automation. Candidates today expect the online job search to be similar to purchasing consumer goods, where relevant information is delivered based on their interests. If this process is not intuitive and simple, candidates are more likely to drop off a career site. With AI and automation on a career site, personalized jobs and content are automatically displayed for candidates based on their resume, experience, skills, and geographic location.
- Showcase a strong employer brand through content. When deciding if a job is the right fit, candidates spend a significant amount of time researching a company. If a digital brand does not meet their expectations, they may not feel a strong connection and apply to an open role. Content on a career site (videos, pictures, blogs, etc.) that conveys information such as a company’s mission and purpose, overall workplace culture, employee quotes and stories, internal events and employee resource groups all paint a picture of what it is like to work there.
- Embrace cutting-edge technology. In addition to AI and automation, organizations must be quick to responsibly adopt work-altering innovations, including: generative AI, which enables organizations to be more productive and fill roles faster by automatically creating content, surfacing actionable intelligence, and eliminating time-consuming tasks; interview intelligence, which brings transparency to hiring teams through recordings, transcriptions, key takeaway, and analysis to move the process forward faster; and candidate hub, a one-stop-shop that helps candidates understand where they are in the hiring process and prepare for next steps.
With Phenom, candidates find and choose the right job faster, employees develop their skills and evolve, recruiters become wildly productive, managers build stronger-performing teams, HR aligns employee development with company goals, and HRIS easily integrates existing HR tech to create a holistic infrastructure.
To read the full 2023 report and company rankings, download here.
Organizations can request their own complimentary career site audit here.
