In today’s highly competitive and digitally-saturated job market, candidate experience can be overlooked in the rush to match jobseekers to a position.
For recruitment agencies, neglecting candidate experience can spell the difference between attracting top-tier talent or losing the perfect fit to competitors. Don’t risk losing great candidates to poor experience—this article covers common candidate experience problems, and the simple solutions to keeping everyone happy.
Here are five candidate experience problems recruiters can’t afford to ignore, and how to solve these common recruitment issues, through automated processes, easy switch-ups to your workflow and other solutions.
1. Lack of communication
The problem:
It’s clear there’s a widening gap between how employers and recruiters perceive the candidate experience, and how candidates themselves feel, and communication seems to be the real point of difference.
Around 78% of employers believe they’re doing a good job communicating with candidates, compared to just 47% of job seekers, in a survey by CareerBuilder.
Candidates often describe the hiring process as a ‘black hole’, where applications are submitted and disappear, with no acknowledgement of receipt, feedback or even a rejection. Radio silence after interviews or assessments only increases candidate frustration and resentment, leading to possible badmouthing of the business online, and damage to the business’ brand reputation.
The solution:
Why is simple and clear communication often one of the hardest things to get right in the recruitment process? Putting yourself into the shoes of a job applicant actually goes a long way in improving this part of the candidate experience.
Jobseekers might have spent days putting an application together, before nervously waiting for a response after pushing the send button. Interview attendance likely involves significant planning, including taking time out of work and personal commitments, travel, possibly finding accommodation, and preparation for presentations or questions. So if you don’t even hear anything back after all of that, how are you going to feel? Annoyed at best, deeply resentful at worse.
Busy recruiters can be at risk of overlooking the importance of a structured communication pattern that gives candidates timely updates and thanks them for their application and patience. Even if the update is simply “We’re still reviewing applications”, that’s always better than nothing.
Try these easy tips to improve candidate communication and see the retention of talent drastically improve:
Send updates often, even if they contain no news or developments. Connect every few days with a simple, polite message that thanks applicants for their patience.
Communicate a timeline (and try your best to stick to it). At the outset of the process, give candidates an accurate time estimate of when they’ll hear back. If the decision time is delayed, let them know straightaway, stopping candidate paranoia (and disappearing acts) before they manifest.
Automate communication with AI-assisted emails or application portals, which can be particularly useful for high-volume applications. Personalise automated messages to make sure your candidates feel seen.
2. Lengthy and complicated application process
The problem:
Overly complex or time-consuming application forms lead to high drop-off rates. If a candidate has to manually enter information already present in their CV on a long-winded application form, you’ve already lost points.
According to a 2025 survey by Zety, a whopping 60% of candidates have given up on an online application process because it was too long or complex.
Some employers think that a high level of complexity in the application process helps to whittle a long list down to the best candidates, but this isn’t necessarily the case. If talented candidates have several similar options on the table, they’re more likely to invest time into shorter applications. So time-intensive presentation, assessment or portfolio requests can actually be a fast-track to losing some of your best options at early-stage.
The solution:
A good rule-of-thumb is to treat the interview as the main stage in which the employer gets a real sense of the candidate, and this can be backed up with early-stage background research, so that the employer already feels they know the candidate reasonably well.
Other good tips for streamlining a lengthy application process include:
Streamline your application process using AI and smart forms that auto-fill relevant fields from uploaded CVs. Offer one-click applications via LinkedIn or other platforms. The simpler and faster it is, the better the candidate experience—and the higher your application completion rates.
Don’t rely on candidate input alone to get a sense of who they are. A majority of CVs are written with AI assistance, and sites like LinkedIn present only the narrative the candidate wants you to see. Use a candidate intelligence tool like YOONO to screen your candidates at an early stage, building a robust impression of their credentials, background and online presence. It’s less work for you and the candidate, too!
3. Slow background checks and verifications
The problem:
Traditional background checks are time-consuming and opaque, often leading to delays, confusion, and withdrawn candidates who accept other offers in the meantime. This can quickly add up to the dreaded ‘bottleneck effect’ of recruitment, leading to candidates waiting around for the results of checks, delay receiving contingency fees and loss of the best talent.
Some checks for sensitive industries or senior roles can take months to process, such as Standard and Enhanced DBS checks, which can take as long as 8 weeks.
The solution:
It’s time to rethink about how background screening should be done. Traditionally, background checks usually require candidate consent, but some of the newest background research tools only scan publicly available data, meaning that recruiters can perform early-stage background checks without seeking candidate consent.
An online candidate research tool like YOONO scans thousands of publicly available data sources, giving you a complete picture of the candidate as soon as their application hits your inbox. This can be combined with later-stage background checks if required, such as Right to Work or DBS checks, giving you complete confidence that you are placing the right person for your client.
4. Inconsistent or biased background screening
The problem:
This is a really hot topic in recruitment more widely, as unconscious or conscious bias slips into the hiring process, impacting on employers’ diversity goals and leading to the neglect of deserving candidates.
Manual screening, which may involve Google searching or CV review, often suffers from inconsistency and unconscious bias. Search engines surface more recent and clickable content, making sometimes extremely important information (or red flags) difficult to find. The same information can be amplified with repeated content, giving you an impression of someone that could be completely one-sided.
As for unconscious bias? Whether it’s favouring a candidate with a university degree over an apprenticeship, or making biased assessments based on a person’s age, ethnicity or gender, there are plenty of opportunities for bias to creep into the background assessment stage, leading to an unfair and unequal employment process.
The solution:
Bias can be difficult to keep in check, even with the best intentions, but there are measures recruiters can take to prevent biased background screening derailing a great hire. Here are some suggestions:
Anonymise background reports by removing personal details, before you share information with other members of your team or a client.
Standardise background screening criteria, as well as interview questions, to keep a level playing field for all candidates. Avoid bringing in or deleting sections of information for certain individuals, to ensure everyone is evaluated against the same criteria.
Use an ethically-built background check service, that has been developed with bias mitigation in mind. It’s really important that the background check provider you use has used responsible source code and has taken adequate measures to comply with UK data privacy legislation.
5. Lack of transparency in hiring timelines
The problem:
What do the coming days and weeks hold in store? Candidate experience can be severely impacted by a lack of basic knowledge about what lies ahead, breeding anxiety and a higher likelihood of dropping out of the application process altogether.
According to the Candidate Experience Research and CandE Awards Program, 34% of applicants surveyed didn’t receive a response to their application within 60 days, and only 7% said they were notified that they didn’t get the job.
Candidates HATE not knowing what’s next…or when. A lack of or an unclear timeline can quickly turn a promising application sour, leading to drop-outs or negative Glassdoor reviews.
The solution:
We all like to make plans—they help us to keep the ship steady and offer a level of security knowing what’s around the corner. You can keep candidates content by:
Sharing a clear and realistic hiring timeline upfront, from as soon as their initial application is sent. Be generous with time to allow for small delays, and in some cases where applications are likely to take a long time to process, candidate portals can be useful for giving applicants a level of control and information about progress.
Using automation to keep track. AI tools and the latest HR tech can provide predictive analytics based on historical data to estimate how long each step will take. Combine this with automated progress updates to keep candidates informed throughout the process.
Make AI your ally in improving candidate experience
It’s the small details that really contribute to overall candidate experience. A short update about expected timelines or a note of gratitude for submitting their application can really set yours and your client’s business apart in a positive way.
Candidate experience goes much further than the singular experience of an application—think of the number of job application horror stories you may have heard from resentful candidates. These stories, especially when shared online, can have hugely damaging effects on your agency’s reputation—reducing referral rates, narrowing your talent pool and reducing your client list.
The good news? Many of these problems can be resolved, or certainly improved, with the strategic use of AI, especially as part of background screening and workflow automation. By embracing intelligent tools, recruitment agencies can deliver a faster, fairer, and more transparent process that today’s candidates both expect and deserve.
In an employment market where candidate experience can make or break a placement, AI isn’t just nice-to-have tech wizardry, it’s becoming a competitive necessity. So don’t miss the boat. Start a YOONO search, and see how AI candidate intelligence can streamline the candidate experience and put your recruitment business at the top of client lists.