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Susan White (00:02)
If we do nothing else today through this podcast, I hope we just raise the awareness of employers out there that let’s be sensitive to that candidate experience and let’s do better.

Susan White (00:17)
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help people leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, an HR consulting practice. Joining me is my co-host and dear friend, JoDee Curtis, owner of Purple Ink, a large-scale HR firm that I’m part of as an executive collaborator.

Today’s topic is one that impacts every organization trying to attract and hire great talent, and that’s the candidate experience. Because the truth is your hiring process really is your employment brand and candidates are paying attention and so should we.

Why does candidate experience matter? according to Codegnan, who has drawn multiple large scale studies regarding job candidate experience, they have found that 76% of candidates say a positive hiring experience actually influences their decision to accept an offer or not. And 52% of job seekers say at some point in their careers, they have declined an offer due to a poor candidate experience. JoDee, does that surprise you?

JoDee Curtis (01:28)
Well, no, because I do think a lot of organizations do not have a positive experience. And I think sometimes they’re focused on their own side or worried about what questions they’re going to ask that they’re not even thinking about what the candidate is facing and even just things like where does the candidate park or… the candidate gets in the interview and they’re already frazzled because they didn’t know where to find the right door and the right person they needed and all that, that they’re not going to have a good interview after it.

Susan White (02:10)
If we do nothing else today through this podcast, I hope we just raise the awareness of employers out there that let’s be sensitive to that candidate experience and let’s do better. When you know better, you do better. So that’s my hope for today, JoDee.

So let’s talk about, at least based on this study, what the most common reasons for declining a job offer about candidate experience. The first one is that the hiring process took too long.

JoDee Curtis (02:22)
Right.

Susan White (02:39)
Then the second most common reason is negative interview interactions. This means that organizations’ offers are being rejected, not because of compensation or role fit, but because of the experience itself.

And you know, negative interview interactions, what I’ve heard from people — and I’d love your perspective, because you talk to a lot of people looking for work too — people feel like they were dismissive, the interviewers were dismissive of them, that they showed up at the interview having not even looked at their resume very closely. Maybe they’re a hiring manager who’s interviewing four people this week and they wait till they get to the interview to actually review the person’s qualifications.

Well, you know, there really is a shift in candidate behavior. 44% of candidates admit that they’ve ghosted employers, meaning that candidates don’t just suck it up and take it anymore. You know, I’ve talked to a lot of HR people who say, we had a candidate in the running, we loved the candidate, we were ready to extend the offer, they’ve gone MIA, right?

JoDee Curtis (03:31)
Yeah.

And as horrible as that sounds, and I still even cringe when hearing that statistic, but you know, I think HR people have spent years ghosting the candidates, right? Never got back with them after they submitted a resume, never got back with them after an interview. So I, you know, I’m not going to condone it. I think it’s clearly unprofessional, but we’re due for some of that, I think.

Susan White (04:12)
Oh gosh, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. So what did Codegnan find out about what is it that the candidate in 2026 is expecting? Well, first of all, 71% of candidates today expect the application completion process — actually filling out an app — to take under 30 minutes. But most require more than that. And 49% of job seekers consequently are saying that applications today are too long and too complicated. Yeah, so what a mismatch, right?

JoDee Curtis (04:43)
Yeah, yeah.

I would say applications should really take less than 15 minutes to apply, right? Sometimes organizations are trying to get everything in the first fell swoop, right? Like asking for things like references and things that you don’t really need on that first application.

Susan White (04:59)
Yes. That’s fair. What a great way to differentiate yourself. How do we keep it really crisp and focused? Yeah, I love that. What’s the second expectation that they found candidates have today, JoDee?

JoDee Curtis (05:19)
It’s about communication. 62% of candidates lose interest after two weeks with no update, and 57% expect to hear back within three days if rejected. Three days, I don’t know. Sometimes people need to get together or set a meeting. They might have several interviews and then set a meeting at the end of the week. So I think three days could be a lot — or might not be very long, but two weeks is unacceptable. So yeah.

Susan White (05:58)
Right, I hear you. And this is what they’re thinking. And so if we’re not changing their expectations or giving them status reports in between, we are having bad candidate experiences, right?

Finally, the third major finding about what candidates expect today is probably one of the biggest missed opportunities. 94% of candidates say they want interview feedback. Whether they get the job or not, they want to know how they did. They want to know if they didn’t get the job, why they didn’t.

What they found in the study is that only 41% of candidates actually received any feedback. We know that when feedback is provided, even if you did not get the job, candidates are four times more likely to reapply in the future for a job that might be a better fit for them. So you can turn a no really into a future opportunity if you’re willing to give feedback.

Now, I worked at a large corporation refused to tell people externally. Internally, we tried to give people feedback, right, if you didn’t get a job. But externally, we didn’t want to risk litigation. We did not want to risk making people angry. So we always had a standard reply. “Unfortunately, you did not get the position. We found somebody who matched our needs better,” or “We’ve matched someone who matched the skills and abilities for this role better.”

But I’m telling you, statistics will tell us that if you can give real focused and fair feedback to people, they’re not going to feel as let down. They’re going to feel like, okay, I didn’t get this one, but I’m going to look at that company again.

So the study also just kind of laid out where organizations are falling short. The data also highlighted some consistent breakdowns in the hiring process.

JoDee Curtis (07:39)
90% of organizations rely on interviews as part of their hiring selection process, but only 28% train all interviewers. Yeah, I’m not surprised by that number at all, right? We just think… And I tell you, sometimes — I have interviewed people for so many years that I forget how many people are uncomfortable with it, they’re untrained in it, they don’t know what to ask or what to say or what’s legal or what’s illegal. So, lot could be done around that.

Susan White (08:21)
It is such an easy fix to train your, anybody who’s gonna be conducting an interview, they’re representing your organization and they should be asking competency-based interviewing questions of every candidate so that you can really, truly assess and compare and contrast your candidates. So easy fix out there. If you’re hearing this and you don’t have a training program for your managers, easy to build one, hire us, we’ll come build it for you. Ask ChatGPT or Claude, get it done. Yeah.

JoDee Curtis (08:47)
Right, right.

Susan White (08:52)
Communication continues to be a problem. 53% of candidates say that they have been ghosted by employers — just as you mentioned earlier — for years, JoDee. A lot of organizations were not really good at getting back to people who had applied for jobs. Secondly, 28% cite a lack of responsiveness as a major frustration.

So while organizations may be feeling frustrated with candidates ghosting them, the data suggests the experience is really often being mirrored by employers. Let’s — the more times you can touch your candidate, the better the candidate experience, plain and simple.

JoDee Curtis (09:29)
And just to be literal, Susan, maybe they don’t really touch them.

Susan White (09:36)
Yeah, I agree. Let’s not physically touch them, right? But, you know, send them a text, send them an email update, drop them a voicemail. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that clarification.

So, JoDee, I thought it would be good for our listeners to hear from a couple of people that are actively in a job search and get some of their feedback. I’m going to introduce you now to James, who is actively in a job search right now, about a recent experience he had. It was one of the most, I thought, complex and convoluted processes. It did not seem to turn him off, by the way, as you’ll hear here. But I just thought with the rigor they’re putting into this, I hope that they get the right candidate. But let’s be thoughtful. I’m not sure every candidate would have the patience to go through this process. So take a listen to James’ story.

Susan White (10:26)
James, thank you so much for talking to me.

James (10:29)
Sure, of course. Happy to be here.

Susan White (10:30)
Great. So tell me a little bit, the last two months, what’s the candidate experience been for you?

James (10:29)
So software engineering jobs, which I can get into in a second, but software engineering jobs, the interview process is not enjoyable. And so in my experience, software engineering job search is almost no practical knowledge. It’s, like, all theoretical, very specific, like, not trick questions, but questions that, like, companies generally ask in order to assess your technical skills. But then those don’t really apply to how you do, how you do at a job. Yeah.

Susan White (11:03)
Yeah. So can you walk us through, give us an example of one company, whatever industry you want, that what would the process be to be a software engineer?

James (11:11)
Sure. So I’m actually, like, had just gone through the process right now with a fintech company. The process for that was a director of engineering reached out to me, said, “Hey, we’re looking for software engineers. Are you interested?” So now I’ve done two cultural interviews, four live coding interviews, and then the final step here is a 90 minute in a panel interview with the founders, hiring managers, and a director of engineering. So four people. And this one was step by step walking me through high school to today. Every, every accomplishment I’ve ever done, every award I’ve ever received, every extracurricular activity I’ve ever done, my GPAs, like, every job I’ve done, promotions, everything like that.

Susan White (12:00)
You’ve been out of school…

James (12:02)
Since 2010, so 16 years. So I actually, so I had to go through my high school transcripts, my college applications, pulling things up because I was, had to prepare for this interview and I knew they were going to ask all this. And so this was probably the most arduous process that I have ever been through for a job. And so that just happened a few days ago. And so now I’m in the limbo period between while they’re kind of assessing the next steps.

Susan White (12:31)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that extraordinary journey. My fingers and toes are crossed you get this role. How do you feel about the company that put you through this rigorous of a process?

James (12:40)
So it’s like they say, you don’t hate the player, you hate the game. I don’t judge companies for doing this because I think it’s that everybody does it and so everybody thinks that they have to do a similar type of process.

Susan White (12:55)
How long from the beginning to where you are now when you first got that call?

James (13:00)
It’s probably been about three weeks now, maybe four weeks. I don’t remember specifically, but three to four weeks, probably. They seem pretty, like, yeah, they say, yeah, this like, we know we knock out people that might be good in this process, but everyone that gets to the process is good, you know? And so they’re kind of like, we might be over-filtering, but we’ve found that this is a very strong signal that if you can get through this process, that you’re going to be good.

Susan White (13:27)
Thank you for sharing that journey. Hey, since you have over the course of your experience had a chance to apply for other jobs, what are the things that you don’t like in an employment process?

James (13:36)
I don’t like confrontation. I don’t like asking negotiating type of questions about comp. And so my ideal is for both the candidate and the company to be upfront about the band and be like, does this work for either of you? I always say my number upfront because I’m like, well, if you give me this, I’m happy with this. And so I tell them that pretty early in the process, because if they can’t meet that, then there’s no point in us continuing to talk.

So compensation for me is not actually, like, a huge driver. It’s the culture and the company and the people that work there. That’s a big, like, that’s important to me. For me, one thing that I don’t like is non-transparent, you know, the, the transparency around, around salary.

Susan White (14:22)
They’re real vague there until the end. And then it’s like, why’d you waste your time and mine? Yeah. Okay. I think that’s fair.

James (14:27)
I think another, another thing is, this is also kind of me as a candidate that’s not great in this area. But one thing that, like, I would like to know upfront or early on in the process is kind of, like, what work-life balance work looks like at a company. And it’s like, as I’ve gotten older and as my priorities have shifted, my tolerance for work-life balance has changed over the years. So early in my career, I was super hungry.

You know, I, when I was early at Uber, we were working, like, 80 to a hundred hour weeks a lot of times, and now I don’t want to do that. So, you know, it’s kind of like transparency around salary, transparency around how work-life balance works. If you’re going to be working 60 hours a week, that might be okay, but I’d like to know that upfront.

Susan White (15:11)
Is there anything the recruiter inside of a company, internal recruiter could do to make the candidate experience better?

James (15:19)
The processes that I’ve been very happy with are when they lay out the entire interview process upfront. They’re like, you’re going to be going through these interviews with, they don’t tell me the people necessarily, but they’re like, this is going to be with a director. It’s going to be with an engineer. It’s going to be with whatever. and they’ve told me the times and they’ve told me what to expect, kind of an agenda for that interview. And the ones that are, have been really great are sending, like, a PDF with, like, how to prepare for each of these interviews. And so it’s kind of like what types of questions you might come across, like how to do…

So for me, I, don’t like being scheduled for something at the last second. I just got scheduled with another company, four hour virtual onsite and so it’s two interviews on Thursday, two interviews on Friday and today is Monday — Tuesday. So it’s a few days in advance. They put them on my calendar, tell me who they’re with. They tell me what to expect. And so now I’m, like, mentally prepared for that process coming up in the next couple of days and how I can prepare, like, how I can sit down and think about it.

Susan White (16:25)
Right. Well, listen, James, thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I think it’s going to be very helpful to all of us. right. Have a great day.

James (16:30)
Glad to be here. Glad I could help. You too.

Susan White (16:34)
The second story you’re going to hear is from Kristi, and Kristi recently accepted a high-level position with an organization. But she really walked away from it some, I would say sober feelings about some of the employers that she spoke to. And I think it would be good for us to hear the long-term effect, I think, if you provide a poor candidate experience.

Susan White (16:58)
So, Kristi, thank you so much for joining me today.

Kristi (17:02)
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Susan White (17:05)
And I know you’ve recently landed a new executive role. Would you be willing to share a little bit about your candidate journey? Any frustrations, irritations, things that made it grueling?

Kristi (17:17)
I think, you know, one of the, one of my most frustrating things was that it’s incredibly easy to submit an application within LinkedIn. And so you can see on there that there’s hundreds of people that maybe are submitting for that position. And you know that probably the vast majority of those people are not qualified for the position that they’re submitting the application for. And so I, yeah, for those of us that are submitting applications who are qualified, I felt like our applications and resumes probably got buried.

Another frustration was, I guess, that the HR recruiter isn’t really, once you do get to the point that you’re talking to somebody, that recruiter just felt like isn’t really taking the time to get to know you as a person. They’re just asking you basic introductory questions, I guess. They’re not necessarily really specific to the skillset that you need for that job, or they’ll ask you about your background, but it wasn’t so much a weed out type of a process.

So, yes, it maybe gets you to the hiring manager, but I just felt like the recruiters didn’t know the positions. If they don’t know the positions that they’re hiring for and they’re asking these basic questions, do they know what they need to look for in a resume to even do that initial screening to get to that generic question and answer session?

Susan White (19:04)
Yeah, very fair. And how about responsiveness? Did you feel like you heard back from the companies that you put applications into?

Kristi (19:12)
No, there was a lot of ghosting, lot of ghosting. I probably put in, I would say different applications over a four-month period of time, and I bet less than 25% of those did I hear anything from, whether that was a, “Yes, let’s do an initial interview,” that was, “No, you’re not qualified,” or even after I interviewed telling me what happened by that.

So to not have somebody at least call, I’m the type of person that wants to know, like, hey, okay, I didn’t get the job, but like, what could I have done better? I wanna know that because I’m a candidate looking for a job and if I’m doing that over and over and over again, then I’m gonna continue to be frustrated not being able to find a job.

Susan White (20:09)
Yeah, my gosh. Obviously, you decided on the role that you’ve recently accepted and you’re actually working in it. What went well, you know, in the candidate experience and the journey that you were on, anything that differentiated any of the companies that you were looking at that might be good best practices to share with others?

Kristi (20:29)
I feel what went really well was having a network. I cannot stress enough anyone in any type of business to make sure your network is strong, make sure that those relationships with people outside those that you’re working with,

the vendors that I worked with, those that potentially — my clients that I had had in the past. But that relationship that you build with that network was critical for me. Had I not had that network, I may still be looking for a job today.

Susan White (21:10)
Yeah, thank you. Kudos to you for having built great relationships, right? And to have people who knew the quality of your work. I always worry about people that are trying to break into different industries or trying to get that help that don’t have the privilege of knowing people. I know, I mean, it scares me.

Kristi (21:27)
It does. Yeah, it does. And I have talked to people who think that, like, their network are their coworkers. “Well, I have a network because I know all of these people.” But when your job is eliminated, maybe their job’s eliminated too. Now, are they your network? Like, are they going to help you find a job? Because they’re worried about finding a job too.

Susan White (21:51)
I think that’s great advice for all job seekers. Any other advice you might have for talent acquisition specialists, for recruiters?

Kristi (22:01)
I would say don’t forget that you’re the first impression that someone sees who’s seeking a job for your company. It’s not the receptionist that’s sitting at the front desk when they come in for an interview. It’s not the office that they see when they come in for an interview or for the first day. It’s the recruiter. That’s who the first impression is with for that company.

So if you’re ghosting someone, if you’re not giving any kind of personal attention, if you’re not responding on time, whatever malfunctions happen at that recruiting level or whatever amazing experience that you give that person, be that I hired them or I didn’t hire them, but whatever experience you give them is going to say a lot about the culture of your company. And I think sometimes the recruiters forget that they are a huge face and a brand of their company.

There were some experiences that I had that after seeing how the recruiters behaved, acted that I was like, if this is the first impression I get of your company, not only do I not want to work for you, but you’re also a vendor of what I do in my world. I’m not sure if I want to use you as a vendor anymore either.

So don’t always just assume that, like, okay, maybe they don’t want to come work for me anymore, but our worlds intersect in so many different ways. And that might cause your salespeople to not make a sale because somebody has a bad taste in their mouth about your organization now, or that might cause your client, if they have clients, it might cause them to lose a client because now somebody’s gone to another employer and said, I had a really bad experience with that vendor and I don’t want to work with them anymore.

So there could be multiple trickle-down effects to a recruiter not giving a good experience to a potential new employee or prospect of a new employee. And so I would say just don’t forget that they’re that first impression and that first look that a new employee would have to their brand and their company.

Susan White (24:26)
Well, great advice. I think that’s great. Well, Kristi, thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. Very helpful.

Kristi (24:33)
You’re welcome, no problem, I appreciate it.

Susan White (24:36)
All right, thank you.

Susan White (24:38)
And then the final person you’re going to hear a snippet from is my friend Erin Todus. And Erin runs a very successful recruiting practice. She had been a real talent inside a large organization in Chicago before she decided to go out with her dear friend and start a consulting practice. And with her perspective, she talks to a number of employers looking for people and she talks to a lot of candidates. So, JoDee, let’s hear what they had to say.

Susan White (25:04)
Erin, welcome. We’re so glad that you’re here.

Erin Todus (25:06)
Thank you.

Susan White (25:09)
So Erin, what are the frustrations that you hear from candidates now that you work with candidates and you’ve worked with them on both sides?

Erin Todus (25:16)
There’s one big headline right now, and that is that candidates do not feel seen, and they have a hard time feeling like they can get in front of a company, and in particular, in front of a human, because there is the world of AI, or the entry of AI into recruiting software and recruiting tooling has opened up the floodgates for many, many more people to quickly apply for the same positions. And then on the other side of things for tooling to replace real recruiter eyes in many cases to vet and screen and stack rank profiles. So sort of technology plus volume does not equal maybe better productivity like we thought. Candidates are by and large applying for hundreds and hundreds of opportunities and maybe getting a conversation or two.

Susan White (26:13)
Isn’t that heartbreaking, right? What are some tools or resources or approaches that you think has some, it’s gaining traction or has some value?

Erin Todus (26:22)
A lot of companies are doing nothing. And I don’t know if it’s for lack of care. I think it’s just maybe a flood of priorities and having a hard time getting to everything. And the candidate experience is sometimes at the bottom of a list of many other things. A couple of things that I really like that I’ve seen some of our clients doing.

One is before even posting a job, doing some direct pointed sourcing for a period of time. In that way, trying to offset this invitation for thousands of people to compete and rather, we know what we’re looking for. Let’s see if we can go find it and tap people on the shoulder. So I think there’s certainly some reckoning and conversation that could be had around the opportunity in that and whether or not we’re being equitable and fair. But I think there’s some creativity in the thought process.

The other thing that I’ve seen some people do is have really visible leaders almost apologize publicly to the candidate base, like on LinkedIn, making posts to say, I know we have many, many qualified people who are applying. We just can’t get to everyone. And we’re sorry about that. And we’re trying to figure out a better way.

So those are two things I’ve noticed that some companies are doing. I think that it signals heart in the right place and trying to solve for this.

Susan White (27:46)
Yeah, it was certainly enhanced their employment brand. What advice do you have for job candidates out there to try to differentiate themselves so they will get selected to be least spoken with?

Erin Todus (28:00)
We’ve almost gone back in time and the job seekers that I’m seeing be more successful are not on LinkedIn firing the resume into every application all day. They’re not working. It means looking at job postings and maybe trying to figure out who you know at that company and see if you can get a referral. But it’s also just going back through your network, reaching out to people you’ve worked with in the past who you had a positive relationship with and put yourself out there a little bit to say, I’m in the job market and here’s why and here’s what I’m looking for.

Equally important: take care of yourself. it is just exhausting to apply and reach out and put yourself out there all day long, and then just sift through rejection after rejection after rejection, or interview and then be ghosted and not get feedback or have a company refuse to give you feedback. You’ve got to figure out a way to keep your mood and your self-confidence and your self-esteem up through that process so you can show up as the best version of yourself in the right conversations.

Susan White (29:05)
Wow, that is just great advice. And what advice do you have for companies so that they can kind of navigate through the morass of all the tools that are out there to help them really find the right candidate?

Erin Todus (29:20)
Gosh, I wish I had a really clean answer for this. I think we’re all as recruiting professionals trying to figure this out. I would say a couple of things. One, to do your best to stay organized about your hiring process. Write really good job descriptions. Have a clear timeline for when you will accept applications, how long you’ll take to work through them and to respond to them. And then to the extent that you can, follow up with people and give them feedback.

Susan White (29:49)
My gosh, yes. I can tell you that I work with HR people that do feel so overwhelmed with all the number of candidates. They tell me they can’t possibly get back to everyone. I think that with automation, there’s no reason that everyone cannot hear back. It’s difficult for me to believe we can’t automate getting responses out to people in a realistic period of time. So think about when you were applying for a job. Let’s get in their shoes for a moment. Yeah.

Erin Todus (30:15)
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more.

Susan White (30:17)
Well, thank you so much, Erin, for joining me today, and I wish you all continued success.

Erin Todus (30:22)
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Susan White (30:25)
Okay, so JoDee, let’s talk about some things that we can do to try to fix the candidate experience. You know, I think everything that we’ve talked about and that our guests talked about, I believe they are fixable through small intentional changes. And by doing those, I think we can have a big impact. So let’s talk about the first one.

JoDee Curtis (30:46)
It’s to increase human connection early. Just someone keeping the process moving and getting back with them.

Susan White (30:56)
I agree. Any contact from the hiring manager along the way builds trust and accelerates decisions. I’m gonna say it actually starts building that trust and relationship for the person who accepts the job. They’re gonna feel like they have a good relationship with that hiring manager from the get-go.

JoDee Curtis (31:09)
Right. Yeah. Number two is to make candidates feel valued. Respect, personalization, and timely communication go a long way. And really every single touch point in the hiring process sends a message about your culture, your values, and your respect for people, and I think respect for their time as well.

Susan White (31:41)
Yeah, I think you’re so right. The third we can do is simplify the process. You know, we’ve already talked about long cumbersome applications can be a real turnoff. Audit yourself. How long is yours taking?

JoDee Curtis (31:52)
And number four, be transparent. 47% of US candidates are more likely to apply when the salary is listed up front. We know that many states are requiring that now, and it is so much more efficient for both the organization and the candidate to know that information up front. And, but again, that transparency builds trust even when it’s not legally required.

Susan White (32:26)
I think that’s fair. Number five, offer flexibility where and how you can. 51% of job candidates in 2026 say flexible interview scheduling improves their experience. So being open to sometimes doing nights or weekends, if that’s what works for the candidate, offering virtual rather than making people leave their work site and travel to you when you can. Flexibility reduces stress and makes it easier for candidates to truly… truly and fully engage. And when structuring the job, of course, we’ve talked about this before, we know that 40% or more prefer hybrid work arrangements. Challenge your organization to see what kinds of flexibilities are possible. Even a tiny bit in the job itself is going to go a long way in getting acceptances.

JoDee Curtis (32:56)
Yeah, yeah. Right. And number six, use technology thoughtfully. Technology should enhance efficiency, not just replace the human interaction.

Susan White (33:26)
Number seven, rethink how candidates demonstrate value. And think about this. The statistics show that 47% of job candidates believe assessments help them stand out even more effectively than resumes. Yeah, so candidates today, this is 2026, they want the opportunity to show what they can do and not just they are presenting to you as their past. And so if you want to take it to the next level, think about is there an assessment that we can give them? Is there some type of matching process that you can help them go through? Candidates who pass a more rigorous assessment or does some kind of instrument, they themselves believe they’re a better fit for your job. So those of you who have been holding off, “we don’t really want to do pre-employment testing,” maybe it’s time to rethink it.

JoDee Curtis (34:18)
Yes, I’m really glad to hear that number has gone up because I think a lot of organizations are scared to add another step in the process. But — and I would add to share those assessments you’re doing whenever possible with the candidates. I’ve heard of so many candidates taking these assessments and never get the results from it. So.

Susan White (34:47)
Yeah, that’s awful.

JoDee Curtis (34:47)
Share it with them. It’s a learning experience for them too.

Susan White (34:51)
That’s great to give them feedback.

So finally, talk to your candidates about your candidate experience. What is working right now? What is not working? To try to keep enhancing what you’re doing. It is so important in good times and bad in an employer’s market or an employee’s market, you want to be delivering a candidate experience that really reflects on your brand very positively.

I would encourage you to debrief your new hires about the journey that they took in order to land in your new hire orientation. Ask them, how responsive were we? What was the attitude, the respect level you felt like you got from our interviewers? Was there a period of time that you didn’t know what was happening? What can we do differently so candidates that follow you can have a better experience?

You really wanna snag the talent that you need, in order to do that, I think you’ve got to understand how can your candidate experience really be part of your strategic objectives.

JoDee Curtis (35:51)
Yeah, yeah. You know, and I hear so many organizations or leaders talking about how difficult it is to hire people, but yet they don’t think about what kind of process are you putting these people through, right? They may be having horrible experiences and then you’re wondering why you can’t attract people.

Susan White (36:15)
We’ve turned them off and we didn’t even realize we turned them off. Yeah, very fair. Well, good luck on this front. We’d love to hear about your candidate experience or any questions you have. Feel free to send them to us.

JoDee Curtis (36:18)
Right, right.

And now it’s time for a listener question. Susan, the question is: “How do you manage younger workers that have an expectation of a promotion every year or two years so that they don’t quietly quit?”

Susan White (36:42)
Okay, I think that’s a good question. I’ve had a number of clients talk to me about that, that they’ve got people just hungry to get promoted and they’re like, I’m not even sure they’re doing the current job really well yet and they’re after me to get promoted.

I do believe that it’s important for every organization to think about career pathing. When you have someone come and join you, where is the most likely next step for them? You can be a very small organization. You can be a very massively large one. But I do think time invested at creating some career paths, making sure that you’re actively and transparently talking to your employees about career paths, how to move up in your organization. I think having some of your executives share their own career paths, having lunch and learns about where you could go in our company is so important.

I know that millennials and Gen Z, they most — not all, but most really want, if they come to your company, they want to keep growing, developing and learning. So spend some real quality time thinking about it. As you develop career paths and you’re communicating those, maybe you have a page on your company website about career pathing. Maybe what you do is with your career paths, you list the skills and competencies needed for that next level and the next level, and then you tie it to your L&D programming.

Let’s make sure that if we know that most of our analysts end up going into project management, maybe we need to be offering negotiation skills or maybe time management or project management skills. What are the skills or competencies needed to keep advancing? And then let’s make sure we’re offering, if not internally coursework, we’re pointing them to external coursework or conferences or certification programs so that people can be equipping themselves who want to get promoted.

Let’s say that you find yourself in an organization that there is no identical career paths. If you’re not family, you’re never going to be in the C-suite, right? Maybe it’s a family-owned business, and there’s just a real ceiling as to where individuals can go. Then I think you need to be transparent about that. I think the right thing to do is when you hire people in, make sure you talk about your org structure, your values, what careers here look like, so that someone doesn’t jump into your company, realize they’re not going to go anywhere and jump out, so that you’re training and retraining and churning and burning. It doesn’t make sense. I want you to be honest, be forthright about it. It’s your system. It’s okay. You’re allowed to have your system. But I don’t want you out recruiting over and over again for the same role because you bring people in and you can’t meet the expectations they have because they don’t align with who you really are.

JoDee Curtis (39:22)
Right. I would add two things to that, Susan. One, be — as the individual or as the people leader to just talk about these. There are some organizations where they’re pretty flat organizations and so you may not be offering individuals title promotions, but are you giving them the opportunity to learn and grow? Or as an individual, are you getting those opportunities to learn and grow? If you’re feeling stuck in a position because that’s not happening, I think that can be a different story than maybe getting a promotion every two years that maybe doesn’t mean a whole lot.

Susan White (40:13)
JoDee, it’s time for In the News. An HRdive.com article that was posted March 25th, 2026 by Ginger Christ caught our attention. It is entitled, “Permission to laugh at work?” You can see why it caught our attention, right? The JoyPowered® Workspace, we like laughing. Christ cites a recently conducted Monster survey of more than 1,000 workers, and here’s what they found. More than 75% of workers say they are less likely to make jokes when a senior leader is present. Yeah, kind of it can be intimidating, right? They don’t want to get on the wrong foot with that senior leader.

JoDee Curtis (40:53)
70% of workers say they withhold humor sometimes to avoid seeming less professional or credible. Interesting.

Susan White (41:02)
Yeah, I can tell you, I know points of my career when I was, like, working with a new leadership team and a new line of business. I would think a lot of funny things, but I wouldn’t say it. I mean, I’d be like, I’m here. I’m trying to build credibility. And I can remember this one group, it was business banking and they were headquartered at the time in the Midwest region and the leader of that was in Wisconsin. And I was in this meeting and all of a sudden I just went ahead and said something funny, and he stopped and he looked at me and he laughed and “I can’t believe you said that.” And after that, our relationship got so much better because he realized I had a sense of humor and it was just, it was fun. So, but I understand the reluctance, believe me, listeners, I understand it, right? Almost 33% of this Monster survey said that their workplaces have grown more serious in the past year. Yeah.

JoDee Curtis (41:53)
That’s kind of a bummer. And nearly all respondents said laughing at work reduces stress and helps workplace relationship building. 100%. Yeah.

Susan White (42:06)
I totally agree. Oh man, I love to be around laughter. I like good clean laughter, believe you me, but I do love it. When laughter is not present in the workplace, respondents to this Monster survey see it as a sign of high stress, burnout, or worry. Definitely tension.

JoDee Curtis (42:23)
Yeah, not surprised.

Susan White (42:25)
What do these survey results mean for us as people leaders? I love to laugh, JoDee. I know you love to laugh. You make me laugh a lot. So such fun. I find joy in it. Finding the funny side of things and ourselves can be bonding, can be healing, it can be grounding, especially when dealing with difficult work situations.

JoDee Curtis (42:43)
Right.

Susan White (42:45)
I do think humor needs to stay clean, as I mentioned. And at least I really do believe that especially in the workplace, I don’t like sarcastic humor. I don’t think you can poke at other people. It has to stay respectful. Laughing at yourself, self-deprecating humor, I have no problem with because it’s about you, nobody else. Good natured humor is usually safe and you’re inviting other people to laugh at themselves, right, when you’re doing self-deprecating humor. So how you respond to a funny situation, I think, especially as a leader will cast a shadow over the rest of your team and they’ll take cues from you as what’s appropriate and what’s not.

JoDee Curtis (43:20)
Right.

Susan White (43:23)
If you’re SHRM certified, you can get credit for listening to this episode. To get the code, go to getjoypowered.com slash SHRM and fill out a short evaluation. When you finish the evaluation, you’ll get the code and a link to a proof of participation certificate. The code will expire May 4th, 2027.

Again, that’s getjoypowered.com slash shrm to get the code, and it’s going to expire on May 4th, 2027. Thank you for listening and thank you for your dedication to the HR profession and leading people.

JoDee Curtis (44:02)
Thanks for joining us today and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan White (44:07)
Thank you.