You’ve found the right person. How can you be sure they’ll choose you?

You’re not the only one making a hiring decision.

When you're hiring someone important into your business, it's easy to focus on whether they're right for you.

Do they have the experience?
Will they work well with the team?
Can they do what you need them to do?
Do they understand the kind of business you're building?

But they're making a decision too.

You may be competing with bigger, shinier businesses offering higher salaries, better-known brands and benefits you simply can't match.

But being smaller gives you something valuable: proximity.

What are candidates learning about your business?

Candidate experience can sound like one of those slightly fluffy recruitment phrases. In reality, every interaction is giving someone information about what it might be like to work with you.

How you communicate. Who they meet. Whether people seem genuinely interested in them. How decisions are made. Whether the reality matches what they've already been told.

Someone considering leaving a larger organisation to join your business is taking a risk too. They're looking for reasons to feel confident about the people behind it, where the company is going and what part they could play in that.

And that's something you can show them rather than simply tell them.

Let them see what they're really joining

One of my clients demonstrated this brilliantly when we were recruiting a Marketing Manager into their challenger SaaS brand.

It's an example I often come back to when talking about SaaS recruitment, because they didn't try to compete by making themselves look bigger or more corporate than they were.

They created a slightly tongue-in-cheek video which gave candidates a genuine glimpse of the people and culture, alongside a PDF with a very honest, warts-and-all view of the business.

My candidates loved it.

It wasn't an expensive employer branding exercise or overly polished. It worked because it felt like them.

Give candidates access to the people they'll work with. Talk honestly about what's going well, what's changing and where the challenges are. Let them understand the reality of the business they're considering joining.

That honesty matters far more than trying to make everything look perfect.

You're not trying to convince them

A brilliant candidate experience isn't about selling the opportunity so hard that someone can't possibly say no.

It's about giving them enough access and honesty to make the right decision.

Do I believe in what this business is trying to achieve?
Can I see myself working with these people?
Do I understand what's actually expected of me?
Am I comfortable with the things that aren't perfect yet?
Can I make the contribution I'm looking for?

Sometimes the answer will be no.

I'd much rather discover that during the recruitment process than three months after somebody has joined.

You should know why this is the right person for your business, and likewise they should know why your business is right for them.

Communication is part of it

One of the biggest frustrations I hear from candidates is also one of the easiest things to get right.

They've had an interview and heard nothing. They've been promised an update that never came. Or they've invested hours in a process only to be ghosted altogether.

If you're still interviewing, tell them. If the next stage needs to move, tell them. If you've said you'll make a decision by Friday and it's now going to be Monday, tell them.

Things change, particularly when you're running a small business. Candidates understand that. What they shouldn't have to do is chase you to find out what's happening.

How you communicate during recruitment is already telling them something about what it might be like to work with you.

Give them a chance to experience the business

Whenever I can, I encourage candidates to spend some time in the business rather than only meeting people across an interview table.

An office tour sounds like a small thing, but you can learn an enormous amount from it.

How do people interact?
What's the atmosphere like?
What happens when somebody stops for a chat?

Those small interactions tell someone far more about culture than being told the company is collaborative.

And if you're remote-first, the same principle applies. After the final formal interview, why not arrange an informal coffee somewhere central and include a few people from different parts of the business?

By this point you've probably asked each other enough interview questions. This is an opportunity for everyone to get to know each other a little better and for the candidate to get a feel for the people they could be working with.

Don't disappear after the offer

Once someone has accepted your offer, it's very easy to turn your attention back to everything else that needs doing.

But if they have an eight or twelve-week notice period, that's a long time to hear very little from the business they're about to join.

You don't need an elaborate pre-boarding programme. A message from you, an introduction to someone they'll be working with or simply sharing an update about something happening in the business keeps the relationship going and reminds them why they said yes in the first place.

Make being smaller work for you

You don't need to replicate the recruitment process of a much larger organisation.

What you can give candidates is access: to you, to your team, to what's really happening in the business and to the part they could play in its future.

Whether I'm supporting a business through a Critical Sprint, Permanent Recruitment or an Embedded Talent Partnership, candidate experience isn't separate from finding the right person. It's part of making the right hire.

Give candidates a genuine experience of your business, and the confidence to decide whether it's the right one for them.

Want help with your next hire? See how we can work together.