The Future of Candidate Experience Transformation: A 2025 Outlook

Hiring is projected to get a whole lot more complicated. For the first time in decades, there are more jobs open than workers to fill them. According to the June Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, there were just shy of 6.7 million open positions in April which is almost equal to the 6.6 million Americans searching for a job. While this creates a competitive challenge, it also brings us an opportunity to better our candidate experience. Think about the last time you gave your candidate experience a jolt of energy. When was the last time you took time out of your day to thoroughly test your hiring process?

If it seems like sourcing qualified teams is becoming an increasingly tricky task, it is. Job vacancies are at a 15-year high, time to fill takes up to 42 days on average and the talent shortage is hitting its peak. Furthermore, candidates are more brave to share their experiences with a company online through career review sites like Indeed, Glassdoor and FairyGodboss, in addition to sharing experiences with friends and family through social media. Employer branding can only carry you so far if your candidates or employees are having negative experiences, then sharing them. 55% of candidates will quit an application after reading a bad employer review online and only 45% of employers don’t monitor those reviews. Additionally, well over half of candidates (78%) say the overall candidate experience is a clear indicator of how a company values its people.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a monthly quit rate of about 2%, making the insights and data analysis of exiting employees extremely valuable. When an employee departs your company, you probably have at least a vague idea of the reason, whether it was mandated by leaders, voluntary or due to retirement; but without exit interviews, you’re left with nothing to put back into your talent management strategy, and a huge bill. The average cost of an exiting employee ranges from tens of thousands of dollars, to 1.5-2.0x the employee’s annual salary.