Candidate Experience Matters More Than You Think

Here's a stat that should worry every recruitment agency: 72% of candidates who have a poor experience with an agency will share it with others. In a market where good candidates have multiple agencies to choose from, your reputation during outreach is a competitive advantage — or a liability.

What bad outreach looks like

We've all experienced it. Calls at inconvenient times about irrelevant roles. No context about why they're calling. Being asked to repeat information that's already on your CV. Getting ghosted after expressing interest. Being called by three different consultants from the same agency in one day.

From the agency side, this usually isn't malicious — it's a symptom of pressure, poor systems, and too many candidates to manage manually. But the candidate doesn't care about your internal challenges. They just know they had a bad experience.

What good outreach looks like

• Contacting candidates through their preferred channel (call, text, WhatsApp).
• Leading with relevant, specific information about the opportunity.
• Respecting their time — keeping initial interactions brief and purposeful.
• Following up consistently without being pushy.
• Remembering previous conversations and preferences.

Technology as an enabler

Ironically, AI-powered outreach often delivers a more consistent candidate experience than manual calling. An AI agent never has a bad day, never forgets to follow up, never calls the same candidate twice about the same shift, and never gets frustrated when someone doesn't pick up.

It also opens up multi-channel outreach in a way that's practically impossible manually. Calling, texting, and WhatsApp messaging simultaneously, with consistent messaging across all channels, gives candidates the choice of how they want to engage.

The commercial impact

Agencies that invest in candidate experience see measurable returns: higher pick-up rates, faster confirmations, lower drop-off rates, and — critically — candidates who actively want to work with them. In a market where the best candidates can pick their agency, that matters more than almost anything else.