Identifying the factors affecting Candidate Experience

The experience of job seekers depends on the quality of their interactions with the organization and varies from positive to negative. Factors determining the quality of experience of job applicants: companies in the recruitment process use the processes, procedures and methods of recruiting applicants. The experience gained through these processes influences the applicant's future behavior and reactions and determines the status of the ongoing relationship between the applicant and the organization. Employers who are inclined to build a strong employer brand are more likely to invest their resources in this task and start developing a talent supply chain by improving their candidate relationships. The present study facilitates the employment of talented applicants in the retail industry and provides solutions to strengthen relationships with applicants. The purpose of this study is to find the effective factors in the candidate relationships and provide solutions to improve relationships with job applicants. This research is qualitative and is done by theme analysis method. In this study, the hiring managers of the retail industry, the managers involved in the hiring process and the job seekers of this industry have been interviewed. Twenty-four interviews were conducted and the concepts obtained from the interviews were categorized into three main themes: recruitment, selection and socialization. Out of the 24 interviews, 9 are specialists in hiring field and 15 are applicants for employment or are employment in this field. Also out of the 24 interviews, 5 were female and the rest were male.

In an annual survey conducted by Talent Board (2016), 41% of job seekers who had a negative experience, no longer intended to purchase the product of the organization they applied for employment or were unwilling to stay in relationship with that organization. Thus, it can be seen that the consequences of the applicant's bad experience are not only beyond the recruitment and talent acquisition processes but also can affect the overall performance of the organization.
The bad experience of the job seeker may both cause him / her to be excluded from the organization's customers or stakeholders and may cause negative consequences for the organization by publishing his / her experience in cyberspace, so the negative experiences of previous job seekers decrease CV submitted by potential applicants.
Research on Candidate Relationship Management has not portrayed the negative and positive factors affecting the Candidate Relationship Management and has not comprehensively and categorically identified the factors affecting the Candidate Relationship Management. Although little research has been done sparsely in this field, the study of factors affecting the Candidate Relationship Management is not comprehensive in any research. This study enriches the relevant literature in this field by identifying and categorizing the effective factors in Candidate Relationship Management.

The present study lays into the category of qualitative and applied research. This and so seeks a practical way to achieve improved Candidate Relationship Management. The research is interpretive and the research approach is inductive because Sub-themes were extracted from the concepts and the main themes were extracted from the sub-themes. In the inductive method, the coding process takes place without considering a predefined framework. The tool of this research is interview. Interviews are as a set of questions arising from the objectives. It is done orally. The interviews used in this study are structured and follow-up questions are used to clarify ambiguous answers. In this study, 24 interviews were conducted. Moreover, no new concept has been extracted from interview 19.

After identifying the important points of the interview, 96 concepts obtained. After categorizing the concepts, 26 sub-themes, 8 main sub-themes and 3 main themes were obtained. The highest frequency belonged to "selection" with 133 and the next belonged "recruitment" with 88 frequencies and finally "socialization" with 52 frequencies had the lowest frequency.
In the main themes; In "recruitment" the attractiveness of the job advertisement, the content of the job advertisement and the recruitment channel, which are sub-topics, have a great impact on creating a positive experience in the job applicants. In general, this theme has been mentioned 88 times.
In selection theme, the highest frequency in the sub-theme of the employee-finder with 83 frequencies and second place refers to the transparency of the job and it`s conditions and then the attitude of the employee-finder.
In socialization theme, the highest frequency is in the education and second place is educational content. After that, the trainer and the cost of education were the next priorities.

Factors influencing Explain three main factors; recruitment, selection, and socialization.
Recruitment stage: comprehensiveness of the advertisement, transparency of the job advertisement, discrimination in job advertisement, attractiveness of the job advertisement and …
Selection stage: Appropriateness of the selection tools In relation to the job, informing during the recruitment process, reducing the number of steps, reducing the process duration, the behavior of the company's employees, behavior of interviewer and ...
Socialization stage: type of in-service training, introducing of the company