With the constant development in technological advancements, it has become crucial for every organization to hire engineers and developers for several roles: web developer, iOS developer, Android developer, etc. Hence, it has become harder for recruiters to hire and retain talented candidates.

The pandemic has completely revolutionized the recruiting game. Today, more and more companies embrace remote hiring and conducting coding tests to assess candidates’ technical skills.

But what's the point of conducting a coding interview which doesn't focus on enhancing a candidate's experience?

Conducting a live coding interview is a cost-effective and straightforward approach, but you need to structure it well to enhance the candidate experience. Additionally, it will help you build a positive employer brand on different career sites and review websites, as candidates will discuss your hiring process with their networks.

Focusing on a candidate-driven approach is not just important but should be your top priority.

Candidates will have a bad experience when they don't get any guidance from your side or didn't get any feedback from you after 2-3 weeks of the interview. Candidates are impatient - they won't wait for weeks and months waiting for your feedback. They will catch some other great opportunities.

However, this will impact your employer brand on several career and review websites. One negative review can have a significant impact on your organization.

That said, here we will discuss 5 ways to improve the candidate experience in a coding interview.

Understand The Job Role

Before you initiate your hiring process, you must be well aware of your hiring position. You should have a fair understanding of the requirements, such as educational qualification, experience, and other business requirements.

A clear understanding of the job role will help you prepare the interview questions before an interview. Asking irrelevant questions to the candidate can annoy them, directly impacting the candidate's experience. For example, you must avoid asking web development questions to an iOS developer.

Be Transparent About Your Recruiting Process

Some expectations about your recruitment process must be delivered clearly to enhance the candidate experience. Most candidates reported that more than 80% of employers didn't set any clear expectations about the recruiting process.

Knowing what they're up to and how you can ease a candidate's self-doubts and confusion regarding the job and the recruitment process.

You should focus on a candidate-driven approach. To enhance the candidate experience, you must clearly define your hiring process. Ask yourself whether you state clearly the steps of the application process? How long will the live coding interview take? To eliminate the confusion amongst the candidates, you can offer resources and tips to help candidates.

Respect Developer's Time

Research says that the best talent is snapped up within 10 days. Developers are busy people, and you should value their time. Don't let them wait for your response for weeks or so. Otherwise, they will move on to other good opportunities lying on their table.

Make your recruiting process easy and simple. More than 60% of job seekers quit their online applications due to the complexity and lengthiness of the process. Make sure you ask only relevant and essential information, and everything else can be found later in the recruitment process.

To enhance the candidate experience, try to respond to them on time, resulting in a quick recruitment process. Also, you must act fast in your recruitment process, but your decision should be thoughtful.

Offer A Tempting Work-Life Balance

As we have mentioned earlier, remote hiring is the new norm in the corporate world, and developers want a work-life balance as the next employee in your organization. Research says that more than 55% of employees consider work-from-home opportunities as their top priority.

You consider offering flexible working hours and make sure this and other perks are made clear throughout the application process. Discuss with your organization what tools and technologies you must use to streamline the operations. This will enhance your employee value proposition and set you apart from the crowd at a vital stage in the talent attraction process.

Consider improving the candidate experience, and you won't face any difficulties in hiring the best tech talent for your organization.

Maintain Candidate Relationship

A candidate's experience doesn't end when you do not hire them. The candidate you reject for a particular job role might fit any other opening in your organization. Hence, it is a good practice to keep in touch with them and notify the candidates about future job openings.

Maintaining a good candidate relationship has become an essential metric for measuring the success of recruitment marketing.

Imagine having a perfect job candidate whenever a new position opens! Build your talent pipeline for future openings in your company. Once there is a necessity, use your talent pipeline to search for perfect-match candidates.

So, how can you maintain a good employer-candidate relationship? You can build a professional relationship by adding the potential candidates on LinkedIn or any other social media profiles. Also, add them to your recruiting email campaigns.

Give And Ask For Feedback

Giving feedback to candidates will help them to improve and better prepare for their future interviews. According to LinkedIn Hiring Statistics, 94% of candidates want to hear the interview feedback.

So, make sure you give feedback to the candidates that you didn't hire. If you provide the interview feedback, they will be more likely to consider your company for a future opportunity.

Also, remember that an interview is a two-way process - if you give candidates their interview feedback, you must also welcome their overall recruitment feedback. It will give a deep insight that will help you improve the candidate experience.

So, are you ready to improve the candidate experience? Improving candidate experience can be hard for recruiters, and there are several factors which you must consider.

With the tips we mentioned above, you can provide an exceptional candidate experience to your future employees and turn every candidate into an employer brand ambassador!