Getting the candidate journey right

The candidate journey matters. It matters because every time you interact with a candidate, there is an opportunity to build a relationship and create a positive experience.

Where to start improving your candidate journey can depend on your recruitment objectives. Eploy has a guide for how best to approach your end-to-end e-recruitment process and improve your online candidate experience. As well as being able to measure your success. 

This short video recorded at In-House Recruitment Live, shares how Ecotricity improved their hiring experience for all and why putting brand and core values first for engagement is essential.

The Ecotricity story

The recruitment function at Ecotricity was initially one full-time employee working from a spreadsheet, using agencies and sifting CVs. This approach was not sustainable or conducive to delivering a positive candidate experience.

To address this recruitment challenge, they developed a clearly defined recruitment strategy that would put the candidate first and make sure that every candidate got a response, from submitting a speculative CV through to the outcome.

Ecotricity wanted to utilise their brand to engage with candidates. It was essential to communicate their strong ethical perspective but also balance the ethos with the benefits. Being vegan is important to the founder and the football club owned by Ecotricity however, you do not have to be vegan to work there.

The short video shares how they approached improving the hiring experience by looking at future recruitment needs, undertaking a discovery process, reviewing the whole candidate journey and company values in a quest to challenge their way of working to get the candidate journey right.

What Ecotricity achieved

Now they have a quick and smooth process that uses recruitment tools to enable talent pooling. A candidate may not be right for a role today but might be well placed for a future role, and the talent pool is an ideal way to recruit proactively.

They used video on their careers site to communicate the employer voice and diversity of working with Ecotricity. Getting this right was fundamental as roles vary from building windmills to a chef for the football team to a customer service position.

Ecotricity used their values to convey empathy and meaning across the careers site, recruitment process and communication. They delivered a brand experience through the careers site that was a seamless transition through to their e-recruitment solution. All configured to the Ecotricity needs.

Having the buy-in right from the top was vital. They even had the CEO star in a video that was shared with every new joiner to welcome them to the team; further engaging with candidates at the very early stages.

In just five months the Ecotricity team introduced a new recruitment strategy and implemented Eploy’s recruitment technology to support this, crafted their tone of voice, defined their processes and made cost savings. Over 90% of candidates now come from the website rather than agencies as was happening previously.

They went on to win an In-House Recruitment Award in 2019 for their recruitment effectiveness.