Sample Candidate Experience Survey Questions (With Template)

User gives rating to candidate experience on laptop pointing at a smiley face.

When candidates are desperate for work, it might not matter so much if you’re slow to respond to applications or if your interviewing skills aren’t up to snuff. In a competitive market, however, a candidate’s experience during the hiring process can determine whether they accept your offer or choose to work elsewhere.

If you want to boost your acceptance rate, maximize the ROI of your recruiting efforts, and ensure a positive employer brand, every aspect of the candidate experience matters. We’ll explain how candidate experience surveys can help you set goals, measure your progress toward providing a stellar recruiting experience, and share some great questions to ask in your surveys.

What Is a Candidate Experience Survey?

A candidate experience survey is a brief survey sent to candidates by HR or recruiters at various points during the hiring process. The goal of candidate experience surveys is to improve the hiring process for applicants while optimizing the company’s recruiting efforts.

Candidate experience surveys are brief, usually just a few questions, and ideally include a mix of fixed-answer and open-ended queries.

Why Are Candidate Experience Surveys Important?

Surveys are essential to improving your candidate experience. Just as you need to talk to actual customers to learn about the pros and cons of your products and services, you need to talk to actual candidates to learn where there’s room for improvement in your hiring process.

Candidate experience surveys give you first-hand feedback about many elements of the application process that can be hard to ascertain when you’re on the inside–what the communication looks like on the candidate’s end, for example, or how your messaging comes across. These surveys can yield rich details about what it’s like for someone applying to work for you and the overall impression the process leaves with them.

On a broader level, candidate experience surveys can help you spot trends that indicate larger problems or holes in your recruiting strategy.

Benefits of Conducting Candidate Experience Surveys

Increase acceptance rate

Getting more qualified candidates into open positions is priority number one for many companies that are struggling to hire. Candidate experience surveys can help you provide a better candidate experience, which increases the likelihood of getting a ‘yes’ to more of your offers.

Strengthen your employer brand

Your employer brand is the reputation you have among current, former, and prospective employees. What do people think it’s like to work for you? Would they want to apply based on what they’ve heard?

When you have a positive employer brand, it’s easier to get talented workers to hand in applications–and it requires less effort and financial investment. For example, applicants who do not receive a job offer are 80% more likely to apply with you again if they already had a positive impression of the company when they first applied.

Reveal holes in your recruiting strategy

How candidates view their experience can sometimes be wildly different from how companies view it. For example, 78% of employers think they do a good job setting expectations and communicating during the hiring process, but only 47% of candidates agree.

Candidate experience surveys can help you pinpoint these discrepancies so you can continuously improve your recruiting strategy, providing a better, more streamlined experience for applicants.

Gain and retain customers

Candidates aren’t one-dimensional. They’re consumers in addition to being job applicants, and they may have an opportunity to purchase your product or service in the future. If they had a great experience interviewing with you, they’re more likely to feel happy spending their money with you than if they had a poor experience. So, candidate experience surveys have the secondary benefit of helping you protect your financial interests.

How to Design a Candidate Experience Survey

1. Choose your weapon

Begin by selecting a survey tool that fits your needs. If you have a small survey audience and only need to distribute a few dozen surveys a year, a simplistic survey app with a link embedded into an email might do the trick. However, if you want to survey and compile results for hundreds of applicants, you’ll need a more robust platform.

2. Identify audience segments

Different groups of candidates can give you different insights about your hiring process, so you’ll want to segment your audience into groups. For example, you might distribute three different surveys to three distinct groups: applicants who dropped out of the process before being interviewed, applicants who were interviewed but not hired, and applicants who were ultimately hired. Your survey questions will differ for each group, depending on what you hope to learn.

3. Pinpoint key data points

For each audience segment, determine two or three data points you’re hoping to learn about, for example, friction points in your application or their reasons for declining your offer. Don’t get too ambitious; the survey needs to be short in order to get completed. Focus your questions around these data points.

4. Ensure anonymity

Make sure you’re using a platform that allows for anonymous responses, and let recipients know that’s the case. Survey respondents will be much more forthcoming with their answers when they know their identifying details will not be associated with their responses.

5. Craft survey messaging

Once you’ve designed the survey, you must create a message asking candidates to take it. Again, short and sweet works best. Communicate the purpose of the survey (to improve your hiring process, to better understand what applicants want, etc.), let them know feedback is anonymous, and share an estimate of how long it will take to compete. Saying, “It’s only three questions!” will greatly improve your response rate.

6. Consider an incentive

Another surefire way to gather more input is to offer an incentive for completing the survey. Something nominal, like a $10 Starbucks gift card, goes a long way toward boosting responses.

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The Best Candidate Experience Survey Questions to Ask

For best results, use a mix of rating scales (on a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rate X), agree/disagree, and open-ended questions. Here is a selection of strong questions in each of those categories.

Rating scale

How would you rate…

The communication you received during the application process?
The recruiter’s responsiveness to your inquiries?
The ease of submitting an application?
The speed of the recruiting process?
Your understanding of the role after the recruiting process?
Your understanding of the highlights of working for [company]?
The preparedness of your interviewer?
The salary range for this position?
The company’s benefits package?
Your overall satisfaction with the recruiting process at [company]?
The likelihood of recommending [company] as an employer?

Agree and disagree

The careers page was helpful
The careers page was appealing
The job description was thorough
It was easy to fill out an application
I knew what to expect from the hiring process
The recruiter was knowledgeable
The recruiter was professional
The recruiter clearly described the job and its requirements
The recruiter was able to answer my questions
The recruiter responded to my inquiries promptly
The recruiter clearly explained next steps
The recruiter kept me informed about the status of the job and my candidacy
The interview was conducted fairly
The interviewer asked questions that were relevant to the position
The interviewer asked questions that were relevant to my background
I had a positive experience interviewing with [company]
I would recommend applying at [company] to others

Open-ended

Describe how you feel about the recruiting process at [company].
How well did you understand the requirements of the job you were applying for?
What did you like about the recruiting process?
What did you dislike about the recruiting process?
What could we do to improve our careers page?
What could we do to improve upon the application process?
What could we do to improve our interview process?
Was there any information you wanted to know, but weren’t given?
How likely are you to apply at [company] again? Why?
Would you recommend [company] to other applicants? Why?

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Downloadable candidate experience survey

How to Measure and Use the Results From a Candidate Experience Survey

1. Evaluate the responses

After allowing sufficient time for recipients to complete their surveys, aggregate and review the data. Look for trends and patterns where multiple candidates shared similar feedback. Connect these findings to the corresponding steps in your recruiting process. For example, if multiple candidates shared that they had an unpleasant interview experience, better interviewer training or more thorough preparation may be in order.

2. Outline action items

Map out what you’ll do to address the pain points identified by your survey. Change can’t happen all at once, so you’ll need to do some prioritizing based on your recruiting needs. For instance, if you’re struggling to attract applicants, you might focus first on removing friction from the application process before you move on to fine-tuning your candidate communications and so on.

3. Communicate your plan

It’s always a great idea to make it known when you’re taking steps to improve your candidate experience. Use internal communications like emails and external communications like social media posts to showcase your actions and make your hiring process simpler or more enjoyable for candidates.

4. Measure progress

Track your progress against the action items you outlined. Repeat the survey process every three to six months to understand your impact and continue optimizing.

Tips for Conducting an Effective Candidate Experience Survey

1. Conduct them in a timely manner

Candidate experience surveys should be designed to gauge a particular phase in the hiring process (application, interview, etc.) and should be sent immediately after that phase. This ensures the experience is fresh in the candidate’s mind so you can get the most accurate, detailed responses.

2. Send surveys after important touchpoints

While it’s fine to send a general candidate experience survey at the end of the process once you’ve either made an offer or rejected a candidate, it’s also a good idea to do them at key points during the hiring process. Viewing your careers page, submitting an application, speaking with a recruiter, and completing an interview are all good touchpoints around which to send surveys.

Also, be sure to send surveys to candidates to whom you make offers and those you reject. While it’s presumed that rejected candidates may have some feelings of bitterness, they offer a unique perspective from which you can learn and grow from. Ultimately, your goal should be for great candidates to come back to interview again, even if they weren’t hired the first time around.

3. Optimize surveys for a smartphone

Candidates are most likely to use a smartphone when they receive your invitation to complete a survey. So, optimize the experience for mobile devices to make it quick and painless for them to follow through on your request. They shouldn’t have to download an app or wait until they’re at a desktop for the survey to work properly.

4. Leverage automation

These days, there’s a wealth of technology that can help you automate the sending and collecting of candidate experience surveys. Automation ensures surveys are sent promptly and can help you follow up to maximize the completion rate.

Use the tactics and sample questions above to create insight-generating candidate experience surveys that will continuously improve your recruiting process and, ultimately, increase the number of great hires.