Candidate job satisfaction, like candidate experience, depends on a number of factors, some of which are out of a hiring team’s control. If a new employee changes their mind about what type of work they want to be doing, for example, there’s nothing a recruiter can do about that.
However, new-employee satisfaction depends largely on expectations, which is something that hiring teams absolutely have control over. If you do a good job of conveying the reality of a role during the hiring process, you’re more likely to have satisfied employees.
The candidate job satisfaction metric can reveal how well a hiring team sets expectations during the hiring process. In particular, it can reveal discrepancies between how a hiring team presents a role to candidates in the job post and how it really is.
Candidate job satisfaction and the job post
A job post plays a huge part in hiring. It’s often the first and only piece of messaging a potential candidate sees from your company before applying. As such, it should provide a clear, accurate picture to enable job seekers to apply with confidence.
Of course that’s not how it always goes. Sometimes, job posts are cobbled together quickly to get the hiring process underway. They may include few concrete details about the actual role and, instead, rely on soft skills and vague language as filler. They may not provide a very accurate picture of the job at all.
Set accurate expectations with your job post
By measuring candidate job satisfaction, hiring teams get important feedback from new employees. They can use the feedback to determine how accurately their job posts are conveying their roles and the company/team culture. And they can get an idea of how well they’re setting expectations during the hiring process overall.
Here’s a few questions to ask new employees to gauge how well you’re doing with your job posts:
- How well do the responsibilities in the job post match your actual day-to-day responsibilities?
- How well do the requirements in the job post match the skills and abilities needed to do your job?
- Are there any major (or minor) discrepancies between the role as written in the job post and the actual job?
- Is there anything in the job post that was unclear or confusing?
- Is there any information we should have included in the job post but didn’t?
