For nearly two years, we’ve been running our monthly CandE Pulse surveys, asking TA leaders and their teams 10 questions about their current recruiting and hiring priorities. We’ll be moving to quarterly CandE Pulse surveys in 2025 to capture more continuous data between analyses, with the final November/December 2024 analysis coming before the end of the year.
What’s been very clear in 2024 is that screening and interviewing have consistently been the top priority for TA teams. As high-growth smaller companies, midsized, and global enterprise employers grapple with increases in application volumes to find those they want to screen and interview, then they actually have to screen and interview.
Screening tests and assessments can help determine whether a candidate is a match for the job or not. On average, in 2024, about 40% of global candidates across job types (hourly, salaried, management) in our CandE Benchmark Research said they had a test or assessment.
But this article isn’t about which tests and assessments are the best screening tools; it is about the power of feedback—feedback for the candidates on what the assessments gleaned for the employers and what the candidates should know, especially if they weren’t selected to be interviewed further.
Candidate assessments that provide feedback to job candidates are designed to evaluate applicants’ skills, competencies, and potential fit for a role while also offering insights that help candidates learn and improve.
We’ve been writing about the power of candidate feedback for a long time, and assessment feedback can be just as powerful—even though, on average, only 5% of candidates said they received test and assessment feedback.
However, for candidates who received written and/or verbal assessment feedback, their “perception of assessment fairness” NPS increased 81%—from 43 to 78.
For candidates who received written and/or verbal assessment feedback, their “willingness to refer others” NPS increased 223%—from 13 to 42.
That’s a testament to how powerful feedback can be. An employer’s legal counsel works hard to prevent litigious activity on any front, including the candidate, so they don’t want TA teams or hiring managers giving candidate feedback. Nonetheless, here are some assessment examples and the feedback they can provide candidates.
Providing assessment and interview feedback enhances the candidate’s perception of the organization and contributes to personal and professional growth. It helps build a positive employer brand and ensures that even rejected candidates have a valuable takeaway from the hiring process.
As shown above, it dramatically increases their perception of fairness, their willingness to refer, and their willingness to continue engaging the business and its brand. The return on candidate assessment feedback is clear: the highest-rated employers in our CandE Benchmark Research invest more in their candidate communication and feedback loops.
