Attracting the Best Part 2: The Candidate Experience
Debbie Morrison • September 7, 2021

Attracting the Best Part 2: The Candidate Experience

How do you attract the very best candidates for every position?


This is the second in a two-part series focused on the question of how to attract the very best candidates for every position. In the first, we looked at the employee experience, because attracting the best begins with retaining the best. Here, we’ll focus on the candidate experience.

 

The ‘candidate experience’ is the sum total of every point of contact between your organisation and a prospective employee. This is an important principle, because every single element of that start-to-finish lifecycle contributes to the candidate’s experience, and therefore their perception of your organisation. Handled well, this works in your favour. If it’s not, it can result in candidates dropping out of the process, or declining offers. The candidate experience is comprised of four primary elements: the initial impression through employment marketing, the application stage, interviews and communication between them, and the hiring and onboarding process.

 

Employment Marketing

Smart companies understand that a job posting and a job description are two different things. A job description is an internal HR document. A job posting is a marketing piece; it’s your opportunity to sell your company, and your opportunity, to the candidates you’re trying to recruit. Great candidates are attracted by postings that speak to them about what it’s like to work for your company, and about some of the more positive – even exciting – elements of the work they’ll get to do there. If there are clear paths for progression, even better; top employees want to see that they can learn, grow, and develop further in their career. Your company website is also a recruitment tool – the best candidates thoroughly research companies they’re considering, so every part of your website (not just the ‘Employment Opportunities’ page) should be viewed through that lens. Good recruiters seek to understand the unique value of working for your company, so we can sell the opportunity in a compelling way when we’re speaking with prospective candidates.

 

Application Process

Have you ever tried to apply to work for your own company? It can be an interesting experiment that helps you see firsthand how easy or difficult it is, and the kind of first impression it leaves with applicants. If you invite candidates to email resumes and cover letters, do they receive a confirmation letting them know their application was received, and perhaps even what to expect next? If you ask candidates to fill in a form with their experience, is the form clean and visually appealing, and does it work properly? When a submission is made, does the applicant get confirmation that it was successful? Some companies – particularly those that have recently begun using applicant tracking systems – ask candidates to do both: submit a resume and cover letter, and also to enter the same information in a form. Redundancies like this are frustrating to applicants, and can cost you the candidate you really want. Ideally, it should be just as easy for a person to apply to work for you, as it is for a new customer to work with you.

 

Interviews and Communication

Before starting a recruitment process for any position, it pays to think about who needs to be involved in the interview process, and when. High performing candidates often have to take time away from a current job to interview, and this can become difficult and frustrating when an interview process has too many separate steps. Group interviews, or having shortlisted candidates move through several back-to-back interviews in one day, can be helpful ways of streamlining the process for everyone. It’s also helpful to determine what you’re looking for at each stage of the interview process. This way, the questions each interviewer asks will be more strategic and intentional, making the interviews more focused and productive.


Throughout the process, one person – an employee, or a recruiter if you’re using a firm – should be the main point of contact with candidates, keeping lines of communication open. If someone is no longer being considered, delivering the news promptly (and compassionately) leaves as positive an impression as possible. If you want a candidate to move ahead, it’s even more important to stay closely in touch, being clear about timelines and next steps.


 

Hiring and Onboarding

The final step in a successful hiring process is, of course, the hire. Smart companies plan beyond day one, though. The experience that a brand new employee has in their first few weeks with your company sets the tone for their time with you, and in fact can cement their decision to stay or to keep their eyes open. Onboarding differs vastly from one company to the next; there’s no single formula for success, but a new hire should feel welcomed, and should have a clear sense of structure and organisation: that the role and the company were ready for them to start. Take advantage of the opportunity you and your new hire have to make a great mutual first impression that turns into a lasting relationship.


Paying attention to these four stages of the candidate experience pays dividends. You’ll attract and successfully hire more of your first-choice candidates, winning the race for the high-performing employees you need on your team

Your Culture Report Won’t Show You This

By John Elliott • June 6, 2025
On paper, they were fully resourced. No complaints logged. No formal red flags. Delivery metrics holding steady. But behind closed doors, the signs were there. Delays. Fatigue. Silence in meetings where pushback used to live. And a growing sense that key people were leaning out, emotionally, if not yet physically. When the cracks finally showed, the conclusion was predictable: “We need more people.” But that wasn’t the real problem. The problem was trust. And most organisations never see it until it’s too late. The Hidden Cost of Disengagement In Gallup’s 2023 global workplace report , only 23% of employees worldwide reported being actively engaged at work. A staggering 59% identified as “quiet quitting”, psychologically detached, going through the motions, doing only what their job description demands. Source: Gallup Global Workplace Report 2023 Disengagement is expensive. But it’s also quiet. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t send a Slack message. Disengagement isn’t new, just silenced. And in executive teams, it looks different. It looks like polite agreement in strategy meetings. It looks like leaders shielding their teams from unrealistic demands, instead of confronting the system causing them. It looks like performance metrics still being met… while people emotionally check out. The issue isn’t always capability. It’s safety. Psychological, political, and professional. Many senior leaders don’t raise concerns, not because the problem isn’t real, but because they don’t believe they’ll be heard, supported, or protected if they do. And this is where the failure begins. The Leadership Lie No One Talks About We talk a lot about leadership capability. About experience, commercial acumen, execution strength. But we don’t talk enough about context. Every leadership hire walks into a culture they didn’t create. They inherit unwritten rules, quiet alliances, and legacy power structures. If those dynamics are broken, or if trust is fractured at the top, no amount of capability will compensate. According to a 2022 Deloitte mid-market survey, 64% of executives said culture was their top strategic priority. But only 27% said they actually measured it in a meaningful way. We say culture matters. But we rarely structure around it. And so new leaders walk in with pressure to perform, but little real insight into what the role will cost them emotionally, politically, or personally. We Don’t Hire for Trust. And It Shows. In executive search, the conversation is often dominated by pedigree and “fit.” But fit is often a euphemism for sameness. And sameness doesn't build trust, it maintains comfort. We rarely ask: Does this leader know how to build trust vertically and horizontally? Can they operate in a low-trust environment without becoming complicit? Will they challenge inherited silence, or unconsciously uphold it? Instead, we hire for confidence and clarity, traits that often mask what’s broken, rather than reveal it. And when those hires fail? We call it a mismatch. Or we cite the usual: “lack of alignment,” “wasn’t the right time,” “they didn’t land well with the team.” But the truth is often uglier: They were never set up to succeed. And no one told them until it was too late. The Cultural Infrastructure Is Missing One of the most damaging myths in leadership hiring is that great leaders will “make it work.” That if they’re tough enough, experienced enough, skilled enough, they’ll overcome any organisational dysfunction. But high-performance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It requires psychological safety. A clear mandate. The backing to make hard decisions. The freedom to speak the truth before it becomes a PR problem. When that infrastructure isn’t there, when the real power dynamics are unspoken, good leaders stop speaking too. And the silence spreads. What Trust Breakdown Really Looks Like Often, the signs of a trust breakdown don’t show up in dramatic ways. They surface subtly in patterns of underperformance that are easy to misread or excuse. You start to notice project delays, but no one flags the root cause. Teams keep things moving, quietly compensating for the bottlenecks rather than surfacing them. Not because they’re careless, but because they’ve learned that early honesty doesn’t always earn support. New leaders hesitate to make bold calls. Not because they lack conviction, but because the last time they did, they were left exposed. Board reports look flawless. Metrics track nicely. But spend five minutes on the floor, and the energy tells a different story. These are not resource issues. They’re relationship issues. And the data backs it. According to Gallup’s 2023 State of the Global Workplace report , just 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged. Worse, around 60% are “quiet quitting.” That’s not just disengagement. It’s people doing only what’s safe, only what’s required, because trust has quietly eroded. Gallup also found that managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, a staggering figure that reinforces just how pivotal leadership trust is. When people don’t feel psychologically safe, they shut down. Not dramatically. Quietly. Invisibly. What’s breaking isn’t the org chart. It’s the ability to speak plainly and be heard. And by the time it’s visible? The damage is already done, and someone calls for a restructure. “Low engagement is estimated to cost the global economy $8.8 trillion, 9% of global GDP.” Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2023 So What’s the Real Takeaway? If you’re seeing performance issues, before you jump to headcount, ask a different question: Do the leaders in this business feel safe enough to tell the truth? Because if they don’t, the data you’re reading isn’t real. And if they do, but you’re not acting on it, then they’ll stop telling you. Leadership doesn’t fail in obvious ways anymore. It fails in the gap between what people know and what they’re allowed to say. And the price of that silence? Missed opportunity. Reputational damage. Cultural decay. Sometimes, the problem isn’t who you hired. It’s what you’ve made it unsafe to say.

The Energy’s Gone, But Everything Still Looks Fine

By John Elliott • May 27, 2025
Why Culture Decay in FMCG Is a Silent Threat to Performance It doesn’t start with resignations. It starts with something much quieter. A head of operations stops raising small problems in weekly meetings. A sales lead no longer defends a risky new SKU. A team member who used to push ideas now just delivers what they’re asked. Nothing breaks. Nothing explodes. It just... slows. And from the outside, everything still looks fine. The illusion of stability In food and beverage manufacturing, where teams run lean and pressure is constant, performance often becomes the proxy for culture. If products are shipping, if margins are intact, if reviews are clean, the assumption is: we're good. But that assumption is dangerous. According to Gallup's 2023 global workplace report, only 23% of employees worldwide are actively engaged, while a staggering 59% are "quiet quitting ", doing just enough to get by, with no emotional investment. And in Australia? Engagement has declined three years in a row. In a mid-market FMCG business, those numbers rarely show up on dashboards. But they show up in other ways: New ideas stall at the concept phase Team members stop challenging assumptions Execution becomes rigid instead of agile Everyone is "aligned" but no one is energised And by the time the board sees a drop in revenue, the belief that once drove the business is already gone. The emotional cost of cultural silence One thing we don’t talk about enough is what this does to leadership. When energy drains, leaders often become isolated. Not because they want to be, but because the organisation has lost the instinct to challenge, question, or stretch. I’ve seen CEOs second-guessing themselves in rooms full of agreement. Seen GMs miss red flags because nobody wanted to be "the problem". Seen founders mistake quiet delivery for deep buy-in. The emotional toll of unspoken disengagement is real. You’re surrounded by people doing their jobs. But no one’s really in it with you. And eventually, leaders stop stretching too. We train people to disengage without realising it Here’s the contradiction that most organisations won’t admit: We say we want initiative, but we reward obedience. The safest people get promoted The optimists get extra work The truth-tellers get labelled difficult So people learn to conserve energy. They learn not to challenge ideas that won’t land. They learn not to flag risks that won’t be heard. And over time, they stop showing up with their full selves. This isn't resistance. It's protection. And it becomes the default when innovation is punished, risk isn't buffered, and "alignment" becomes code for silence. Boards rarely see it in time Boards don’t ask about belief. They ask about performance. But belief is what drives performance. When culture begins to fade, it doesn't look like chaos. It looks like calm. It looks like compliance. But underneath, the organisation is hollowing out. By the time a board notices the energy is gone, it’s often because the financials have turned, and by then, the people who could've helped reverse the trend have already left. In a 2022 Deloitte study on mid-market leadership, 64% of executives said culture was their top priority, yet only 27% said they measured it with any rigour . If you don’t track it, you won’t protect it. And if you don’t protect it, don’t be surprised when it disappears. The real risk: you might not get it back Here’s what no one likes to admit: Not all cultures recover. You can try rebrands. You can run engagement campaigns. You can roll out leadership frameworks and off-sites and feedback platforms. But if belief has been neglected for too long, the quiet ones you depended on, the culture carriers, the stretchers, the informal leaders, they’re already checked out. Some have left. Some are still there physically but not emotionally. And some have started coaching others to play it safe. Once that happens, you're not rebuilding. You're replacing. So what do you do? Don’t listen for noise. Listen for absence. Absence of challenge. Absence of stretch. Absence of belief. Ask yourself: When was the last time someone in the business pushed back? Not rudely, but bravely? When did someone offer an idea that made others uncomfortable? When did a leader admit they were unsure and ask for help? Those are your indicators. Because healthy culture isn’t silent. It’s alive. It vibrates with tension, disagreement, contribution and care. If everything looks fine, but no one’s really leaning in? That’s your problem. And by the time it shows up in the numbers,t might already be too late.