How To Measure Candidate Experience: Metrics and Methods

Candidate experience offers job seekers a glimpse into what working for your organization may be like and can have a significant impact on your ability to engage qualified talent both now and in the future.

Supporting a positive candidate experience can excite prospective team members about joining your team and increase the likelihood of candidates referring others to your open positions. On the other hand, a negative experience may lead to lost candidates and poor reviews about your company.

Effectively measuring candidate experience is essential to driving improvement. In this guide, learn key steps to measure candidate experience, important metrics to consider tracking, candidate feedback methods, and best practices to enhance candidate experience.

How to measure candidate experience

According to a survey of 500 job seekers conducted by CareerPlug, 76% of respondents said a positive candidate experience influenced their decision to accept an offer. The survey also found that 52% of respondents have declined an offer due to a poor candidate experience in the hiring process and 44% have ghosted an employer, meaning they stopped responding during the hiring process. Given this, supporting an engaging experience for all candidates is essential to building a strong workforce.

Measuring candidate experience can help your organization identify what’s working and what could be improved to hire qualified talent. A proactive, data-driven measurement strategy can give you insight into your application process, hiring steps, communication, recruitment technology, and other elements that impact candidate experience.

To measure candidate experience, consider these steps:

1. Define key touchpoints. Understand where and how candidates interact with your organization throughout the hiring process. Touchpoints may include your social media posts or pages, job descriptions, career site, job application form, email and text communications, talent assessments, and interviews (phone, video, and in-person).
2. Evaluate key metrics. Identifying the most important metrics related to candidate experience across touchpoints can help your organization make data-driven decisions to improve the experience. For example, if your job application completion percentage is low, you can determine ways to streamline the application process and drive engagement among job seekers.
3. Collect feedback. While evaluating metrics can help you understand quantitative feedback about candidate experience, collecting feedback from candidates can help you gather firsthand perspectives from potential team members about their experience. Consider using surveys or feedback forms post-interview and post-hiring process to gather feedback.
4. Analyze feedback. Once you receive feedback from prospective candidates, review and compare responses to identify common themes, trends, and areas for improvement.
5. Implement changes. Based on feedback, make necessary adjustments to the recruitment process to enhance the candidate experience. As an example, if most candidates say the hiring process takes too long, this feedback can encourage your team to review the process, identify bottlenecks, and speed up certain steps.
6. Continually monitor. Measuring and improving candidate experience and overall recruitment effectiveness is an ongoing process. By continually monitoring a standardized set of metrics, collecting candidate feedback, and implementing changes, you can improve candidate experience.

Key metrics to measure candidate experience

Aligning on a list of metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) and tracking them over time can help your organization identify insights and enhance candidate experience. As a result, your team can make data-driven decisions and can optimize your recruitment strategies to attract and engage qualified job seekers.

Many technology solutions centralize candidate experience metrics and provide actionable insights to help make improvements. Available solutions include applicant tracking systems (ATS), human resources information systems (HRIS), recruitment platforms, and candidate relationship management (CRM).

Important candidate experience metrics to track include:  

• Application completion rate. The total percentage of prospective team members who complete and submit their job application. A high application completion rate shows that your organization likely has an efficient and user-friendly application.
• Application abandonment rate. The percentage of job seekers who begin an application but don’t complete or submit the application. A significant application abandonment rate may mean that your application process is too time-consuming and frustrates prospective candidates.
• Total time to fill. Also known as time to hire. The amount of time it takes to fill a job from the date the opening is posted until an offer is accepted. Speeding up total time to hire can drive candidate engagement and help you secure top talent before they receive competing offers.
• Time spent in each hiring step. The length of time prospective team members spend in each stage of the hiring process, such as initial screening, interviews, background checks, and offer negotiation. If you notice candidates spend significant time in one stage, such as the interview process, you can identify ways to streamline interview scheduling and rounds.
• Candidate drop-off rate. The percentage of candidates who choose to withdraw from the hiring process at any given stage. Understanding the total rate and when candidates withdraw from the process can help you determine ways to improve engagement among qualified candidates.
• Offer acceptance rate. The percentage of individuals who receive an offer and choose to move forward with joining the company. If your offer acceptance rate is low, consider asking candidates who turned down job offers why they’re choosing not to join your team. Potential reasons may be because their candidate experience was disengaging, they received a competing offer, or your salary and benefits didn’t align with their expectations.
• Candidate satisfaction rate. A measure of how happy or satisfied candidates were with the hiring process, starting with the initial application stage and throughout the rest of the experience. A variety of factors impact overall candidate satisfaction, including the ease of the application process, the hiring timeline, candidate communications, and responsiveness.  

One way to understand the candidate satisfaction rate is by using a candidate Net Promoter Score (cNPS). Similar to a Net Promoter Score (NPS), which measures customer experience a cNPS measures candidate experience.

To determine your cNPS, candidates are often asked a question such as, “Based on your candidate experience, how likely are you to recommend someone to apply to the company?” with a rating scale of zero through 10. Individual cNPS responses are then bucketed into three categories:

• Detractors (0-6). Not likely to recommend your company and may share something negative about the experience.  
• Passives (7-8). Not likely to actively recommend your company, but won’t necessarily speak negatively about the experience.
• Promoters (9-10). Highly likely to recommend your organization as a place to apply for a job.

Passive responses aren’t included in the overall cNPS calculation. The following formula can be used to determine your overall cNPS:

• % of promoters - % of detractors = cNPS

As an example, if you receive responses from 12 candidates and six are promoters, four are passive, and two are detractors, the calculation would show:

• 50% - 16.67% = 33 (rounded to the nearest full number)

Overall cNPS falls on a scale of -100 to 100 and most organizations strive to maintain average scores above 50.

Methods for gathering feedback

A global candidate experience research report distributed by ERE Media found that gathering candidate feedback is on the rise among employers. The research found that as of 2023, 67% of participating employers said they asked for feedback after a candidate was hired, compared to 40% in 2022. Additionally, 46% asked for feedback after the interview stage in 2023, a significant increase compared to 19% in 2022.

Below we discuss ways your human resources, recruiting, and talent acquisition teams can gather candidate feedback.

Distributing candidate surveys and questionnaires

Send out standardized candidate experience surveys or questionnaires either during the hiring process or after the process has concluded to gather feedback on their experience and perceptions of your organization. Ask for specific ratings about various aspects of each candidate’s experience, as well as key highlights and areas for improvement.

Questions to consider asking include:

• How did you find out about the position and our company?
• How would you rate the job application process?
• How would you rate communication during the hiring process?
• Did the interview experience meet your expectations based on what was outlined in the job description?
• How would you rate your candidate experience as a whole?
• How likely are you to recommend the company to other job seekers based on your experience?

Conducting interviews or focus groups

Engage individuals for one-on-one interviews or small group discussions to collect in-depth, qualitative feedback and insights into their candidate experience. Taking notes and reviewing transcripts from these conversations can help your organization identify actionable ways to improve candidate experience.

Keep in mind, this approach may be more relevant for recent hires because candidates who don’t ultimately join your team may not be as open to taking the time for an interview or focus group discussion.

Reviewing candidate communications

Analyze written communications between candidates and hiring managers, such as emails, text messages, chat messages, and interview notes. This process can help you understand which areas your team is driving engagement, as well as steps you can take to enhance candidate experience.

For example, if several candidates had to follow up multiple times to check on their application status or schedule an interview, this is likely a sign your candidate communication could be more efficient and timely.

Monitoring social media

Track and assess candidate comments, reviews, and discussions about your organization’s hiring process on social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram, along with employee review websites like Glassdoor. Many social media analytics tools include data related to overall sentiment toward your brand and keywords associated with your organization, which can help you get a pulse on both candidate and customer or prospect perceptions.

Review sites like Glassdoor have sections dedicated to candidate experience, which can provide valuable insights. According to the CareerPlug research cited above, 35% of candidates surveyed have left a negative review after a negative candidate experience, while 60% left a positive review after a positive experience.

Assessing AI-powered chatbot logs

An increasing number of organizations are embracing AI-powered chatbots and other AI recruiting tools to drive efficiencies. AI-powered chatbots can be used to answer commonly asked candidate questions and point individuals in the right direction to apply to relevant roles.

A survey of 350 HR and talent acquisition leaders conducted by Talent Board found that 51% of respondents cite a significant improvement in candidate satisfaction as a direct result of implementing chatbots. Reviewing the logs and transcripts of interactions between candidates and AI-powered chatbots or virtual assistants used in the hiring process can help identify insights related to candidate experience.

Best practices for enhancing candidate experience

Once you have a grasp on what’s working and what’s not from a candidate experience standpoint, the next step is to leverage these insights to improve the process for all candidates. According to a global survey of 1,234 employers and 1,000 candidates distributed by Lighthouse Research & Advisory, among respondents, candidate experience is one of the top three talent acquisition priorities in 2024 and 2025.

Best practices to help your team enhance candidate experience include:

• Highlighting details about your employer brand on social media and in recruitment materials to help candidates learn about your company
• Simplifying the application processes by only requiring candidates to share the most critical information
• Ensuring applications are mobile-friendly by writing concise job descriptions and reducing the number of fields needed to complete an application
• Adhering to a standardized hiring process and maintaining transparency with candidates about the timeline each step of the way
• Leveraging AI hiring tools and other technology to automate certain hiring steps, such as scheduling interviews, administering skills or talent assessments, and initiating reference and background checks
• Personalizing communications by using candidates’ names and including information from their resumes, applications, and interviews
• Providing feedback and status updates to candidates throughout the hiring process
• Closing the loop with all candidates, including those who don’t move forward or receive an offer
• Building a talent pipeline or community to keep prospective candidates engaged until the right opportunity is available  
• Collecting feedback from candidates on the overall experience

Hire with Upwork

Measuring and improving is an ongoing process. To ensure candidate experience at your organization is as positive and engaging as possible, consider enlisting the support of an expert recruitment specialist.

Skilled independent recruiters and recruitment consultants are available on Upwork to help you identify and measure key candidate experience metrics and implement best practices for improvement. This can help you attract and hire qualified workers to drive positive outcomes for your team. Browse available recruitment experts.

Through Upwork’s end-to-end full-time hiring solution, you can also initiate contract-to-hire working relationships with skilled professionals across industries and experience levels. This approach enables your team to streamline the hiring process and candidate experience compared to traditional full-time positions, quickly fill skills gaps, engage workers for a trial period, and decide whether to move forward with a full-time relationship.