Candidate experience survey template

The Candidates You Reject Are Reviewing You Anyway

Here’s the uncomfortable arithmetic of hiring: for every role you fill, dozens of people spent evenings on applications, took screening calls during lunch breaks, and prepared seriously for interviews — and most heard nothing, or heard it weeks late. They don’t simply vanish. They compare notes with peers, warn colleagues considering your offers, and increasingly publish their verdict where every future candidate will read it.

Your employer brand is being written by people you never hired. This candidate experience survey is how you start editing the draft — by asking applicants directly what the journey felt like, while it’s still fresh.

What to Ask While the Interview Is Still Fresh

The questions that predict whether a candidate speaks well of you:

• Scheduling respect — how easy was it to book interviews around their current job, on an opinion scale? Rescheduled three times? They noticed.
• Preparation signals — ‘Did your interviewers appear to have read your application beforehand?’ A yes or no question whose answer quietly indicts half your panel.
• The conversation itself — were they interrupted? Could they finish a thought? Did they learn something real about the role in return?
• Waiting-room communication — did you hear back when they said you would? This single item usually scores lowest and costs the least to fix.
• Advocacy — the standard recommendation question in NPS format: how likely are they to suggest a friend apply? Candidate NPS is the number your careers page will never tell you.
• The one change — an open long text invitation: what single thing would have made this process better?

Ask at All Three Endings — Especially the Third

• After the interview stage, whatever the outcome.
• After the offer — joiners and decliners both have views on how it was handled.
• After the rejection — and yes, survey them. Rejected candidates give the least filtered feedback you will ever receive precisely because they have nothing left to lose, and a respectful process publicly acknowledged turns a disappointed applicant into a neutral observer instead of a hostile reviewer.

Keep responses anonymous by default — candidates give honest answers only when the feedback cannot follow them — and tag each survey link with the role and stage via hidden fields so submissions arrive pre-sorted by requisition.

Read the Signal, Then Close It

Filter results by stage in the response view: if scheduling scores well but waiting-room communication scores badly, you have found this quarter’s fix. Alert the recruiting lead to every submission with an instant notification, and consider closing rejected candidates’ surveys with a redirect to your open-roles page — a considerate ending that occasionally wins back exactly the person you wanted anyway via custom redirects.

Candidate listening pairs naturally with the candidate feedback use case and sits alongside other hiring instruments in the recruit talent collection — with evaluation-focused formats in the evaluation surveys sub-category.

Frequently Asked Questions