15 Essential Candidate Experience Survey Questions

The foundation of every successful relationship is clear communication, and recruiter-candidate relationships are no different. If you’re not asking candidates for feedback, you’re relying on guesswork when it comes to connecting with candidates in a meaningful way. That’s the magic of candidate experience survey questions.

These surveys take the ambiguity out of creating candidate relationships by allowing you to gather feedback on your hiring efforts. Armed with genuine input straight from the most reliable source—the candidates—you’ll be able to fine-tune your recruiting to ensure each and every candidate has a winning candidate experience.

When constructing your surveys, making them anonymous is the best way to encourage honest opinions. Candidates want to secure a job, and a lack of anonymity pressures them into designing responses that provide a better shot at an offer.

Ready to create a stronger connection with candidates? Here are 15 candidate experience survey questions to inform your efforts in crafting compelling candidate relationships.

Open-Ended Candidate Experience Survey Questions

With open-ended questions, candidates can express their opinions in as much detail as they want. While the qualitative nature of this candidate feedback is a bit difficult to structurally analyze, the richness in responses is a significant positive.

Candidates can respond to your questions in their own way, allowing for an endless range of answers. Because of the infinite possibilities of open-ended questions, you’ll receive candidate feedback on unexpected aspects of the candidate relationship that you hadn’t previously considered.

Be cognizant of how many open-ended questions you include in each of your candidate experience surveys. Including too many creates surveys that are much too time-consuming for candidates to complete.

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Examples of Open-Ended Questions

1. How well were you able to connect with your interviewers? Please describe.
2. How would you describe the overall experience with your interviewers?
3. How would you describe the speed and efficiency of our hiring process?
4. What are two things we could do to improve our hiring process?
5. What were your two favorite aspects of our hiring process?
6. Would you consider applying for a job at [your organization] again? Why or why not?
7. Based on your experience, is [your organization] a place you would like to work? Why or why not?

Likert Scale Candidate Experience Survey Questions

Likert scale questions provide a bit more structure to data gathering and analysis. These questions ask candidates to evaluate their attitudes on a statement and select a rating on a scale from one extreme to another. Typically, “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” are at opposite ends of the likert scale.

Based on the sentiment that candidates select for each statement, hiring teams can assess the candidate feedback and zero in on problematic and successful areas of the candidate relationship.  

While open-ended questions generate rich insights, most candidates won’t want to spend time on a survey where all of the questions require typed-out responses. If you add a healthy dose of likert scale questions into the mix, your survey completion rates are bound to increase.

Examples of Likert Scale Questions

1. My interviewers were knowledgeable.
2. My interviews made me feel comfortable.
3. I felt represented in my interviewer panel.
4. The hiring process gave me a thorough understanding of [your organization]’s culture.
5. I knew what to expect at each stage of the hiring process.
6. The hiring process was quick.
7. Recruiters communicated with me in a timely manner.
8. Based on my experience, [your organization] is a company I would like to work for.

Do You Really Know How Candidates Feel?

When it comes to cultivating strong relationships with candidates, putting effort into creating positive experiences is only half the battle. Candidates must also feel that they’ve formed a connection with your brand and your hiring team, or else you’ve created no candidate relationship at all.

Stop making assumptions about your relationships with candidates and start gathering genuine insights with candidate experience surveys. (Your candidates will thank you for it.)

If you want to understand the ins and outs of each candidate’s experience, GoodTime Hire’s interview scheduling software’s got you covered.

Learn how Hire’s new feature, Candidate Pulse, gathers invaluable candidate insights to take the candidate relationship to the next level.

About the Author

Rachel Heller

Rachel is passionate about creating and distributing powerful, engaging, and expert-vetted content. As the former Content Specialist at GoodTime, she covered the latest trends, insights, and expert recommendations for all things talent acquisition and recruiting.