Building an Emotional Connection with your Candidates
In his book, Descartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, argues that emotion is a necessary ingredient to almost all decisions. When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences, which lead to our decision.
Being a recruiter is not only using Boolean searches, contacting candidates, and speaking with hiring managers; it’s also about relationships with all parties. And our offline and online relationships are full of emotions, and that’s why it is essential to understand your audience at your network.
Candidates go through a range of emotions from excited to being anxious to feeling curious to feeling sceptical or satisfied. The way a recruiter engages with candidates during the different stages of the hiring funnel can often make or break an offer.
Emphasizing Empathy for a Successful Candidate Experience
So how does empathy find its way into the process? When recruiters have that ability to understand and share in the feelings of their potential candidates, it allows them to craft their messages and actions towards them, including them in the process rather than leaving them out on an island.
Candidate Journeys help recruiters understand what a candidate is going through at each stage of the hiring process. On the other hand, candidate experience designs what recruiters want candidates to feel. Candidate experience is essentially the solution to all the potential challenges in a candidate journey.
Candidate Journey
