Candidate experience at scale: how to measure and improve it

Candidate experience is the sum of how applicants perceive every step of your hiring process, from the job advert to the final decision, whether or not they are hired. It used to be a soft topic. It is now measurable, and in high-volume hiring it is often the difference between a funnel that fills and one that leaks.

This guide covers what candidate experience is, why it matters, how to measure it, how to improve it at volume, and what over 5,000 candidates told us about Mochi, Maki's AI voice screening agent, in Q1.

What is candidate experience?

Candidate experience is a job seeker's overall impression of an employer, formed during recruitment: how easy it was to apply, how quickly they heard back, how relevant and fair the screening and interviews felt, how clearly the role was explained, and how they were treated when the answer was no.

Three things follow. It covers rejected candidates as well as hires, who are the large majority in volume hiring. It is formed by every touchpoint, not just the interview. And it is a perception, so it can be measured.

Why is candidate experience important?

Scale is no longer the differentiator, experience is. Organisations can attract thousands of candidates, but the real advantage lies in how effectively they engage, assess and learn from them.

Candidates do not move through a funnel passively. They decide whether the experience is worth their time, and that judgement shapes how they talk about the company. A meta-analysis of applicant reactions to selection procedures covering 86 samples found that applicants who perceive the selection process positively also view the organisation more favourably. Candidate experience is, in effect, a proxy for brand perception: every interaction in the hiring journey shapes how candidates see the organisation, regardless of outcome.

There is a practical reason too. When the process is clear, relevant and easy to complete, candidates participate fully, so engagement and completion rates rise. A good candidate experience is one of the mechanisms of hiring well, not a cost of it.

The candidate experience journey

The candidate experience journey is the sequence of touchpoints an applicant passes through. For most roles it has six stages:

1. Discovery. The job advert and careers page.
2. Application. How long it takes and what it asks for.
3. Screening. The first assessment or conversation, and the biggest drop-off point.
4. Interviews. Scheduling, preparation and consistency between interviewers.
5. Decision. How fast, and with what explanation.
6. Feedback and closure. Whether the candidate is thanked, told why and left with something useful.

Mapping this journey shows where the process asks the most of candidates and gives the least back. At volume, that point is almost always screening.

How to measure candidate experience

Candidate experience is often discussed but rarely measured at scale. Six candidate experience metrics make it concrete:

• Reach rate: the share of invited candidates you actually make contact with.
• Engagement rate: the share who start the screening or assessment.
• Completion rate and time to complete: how many finish, and how long it takes.
• Feedback completion rate: the share who answer a short candidate experience survey afterwards.
• Perceived fairness: the share who say the process felt fair.
• Perception shift: the share who say the process improved their view of the company.

Ask at the moment of the experience, not weeks later, and collect free-text comments alongside the scores: the words candidates use tell you what to fix. Our candidate feedback page shows the comments this produces.

How to improve candidate experience at volume

Efficiency and experience are no longer in tension. Five practices improve candidate experience without slowing the funnel:

1. Keep screening short and focused. More time spent does not mean better evaluation. Long, repetitive processes create fatigue rather than signal.
2. Make it conversational and clear. Candidates want to know what is being asked and why. Research from organisations such as Gartner shows that candidate trust in AI-driven hiring stays low when processes lack transparency.
3. Standardise the evaluation. Assess every candidate against the same criteria, in the same format. That limits subjective bias early in the funnel, and candidates notice. The Deloitte France customer story shows what this looks like in practice.
4. Give something back. Use the screening to explain the role and the company, so candidates leave better informed whatever the decision.
5. Design for how candidates actually engage. Support desktop and mobile, and offer the languages your applicants speak.

As McKinsey has argued about AI more broadly, the real value comes from redesigning the workflow, not simply automating the existing one.

What the Mochi Q1 data shows

Q1 data from Mochi, Maki's AI voice screening solution, shows how these principles play out. Candidates were invited at scale, with over 90% successfully reached and nearly 60% engaging with the screening. Average screening duration was around 8 minutes, so meaningful evaluation did not come at the expense of candidate experience.

Feedback at scale

We captured structured feedback from over 5,000 candidates in Q1, across a high-volume hiring population, with an 84% feedback completion rate. Candidates consistently described the experience as "comfortable", "clear" and "engaging", with one calling it "an amazingly comfortable way of giving a screening interview". Several noted that it "didn't even feel like it was a bot". Others said they "got more information about the role and company" through the process.

Fairness and consistency

Around 90% of candidates reported that the process felt fair, with comments such as "it was a good interview, it felt fair". Every candidate is assessed against the same criteria, in the same format, while recruiters retain full visibility through transcripts, audio and structured outputs, so human oversight remains central. Fairness becomes something that is designed in, measured through candidate feedback and continuously improved.

Brand perception

Around 95% of candidates said the screening improved their perception of the company. Some "liked that the company is open to using new technology", others felt the AI showed a "profound knowledge of the company". Feedback such as "everything is good, happy to go further" reflects a process that feels smooth rather than burdensome. Where sentiment towards AI hiring is mixed, organisations that prioritise transparency and clarity can turn AI from a risk into a brand differentiator. As Deloitte highlights in its Human Capital Trends research, the organisations that adopt AI successfully balance technological advancement with human outcomes.

How candidates engaged

The majority of candidates completed the process on desktop, while a meaningful proportion engaged via mobile. Most completed in English, alongside growing multilingual participation. Candidate experience is shaped not just by what is asked, but by how and where it is delivered.

Candidate experience tools and platforms

A candidate experience platform does three things: it runs a candidate-facing step such as screening at volume to a consistent standard, collects feedback at the moment of the experience, and gives recruiters the evidence behind each result. Mochi, Maki's conversational voice and web screening agent, is built on that model.

Whatever tools you use, the test is whether the data from each interaction feeds the design of the next, so hiring moves from a static process to a feedback-led system.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good candidate experience? Candidates know what is being asked and why, the process takes a reasonable time, everyone is treated consistently, and candidates leave better informed whatever the outcome.

How do you measure candidate experience? With a short survey at the point of the experience, alongside reach, engagement, completion, perceived fairness and perception shift.

Does AI screening hurt candidate experience? Not when it is transparent, short and conversational. In Q1, around 90% of Mochi candidates said the process felt fair and around 95% said it improved their perception of the company.

Final thoughts

The organisations leading in this space are not simply processing more candidates. They are building systems that let them understand, engage and evaluate talent at scale, and that treat candidate experience as a metric rather than a slogan. The future of hiring is not about replacing human decision making. It is about better data, better processes and better insight to make those decisions with confidence.