The Significance of Candidate Questions
Answering candidate questions at the end of an interview or even before the next stage in your hiring process might initially seem exhausting and frustrating. However, ensuring you can attract and hire the right talent for your team is crucial.
Even if you’ve worked carefully with Glencourt Associates to design informative job descriptions and communicate as much information as possible to the Storefitting and POS or POP candidate about your open role, they will still want to clarify certain things.
Although 84% of candidates will conduct their research (checking your social media pages, website, and more), they can only gather so much information before being willing to apply for a role. Answering your candidate’s questions effectively is how you help them determine whether they’re the right fit for the role you’re offering.
The right responses also:
Offer Deeper Insights into Candidates
The questions your candidates raise with your hiring team offer valuable insight into their priorities, values, and expectations. While most candidates will naturally want to ensure they’re being paid the right salary for their skills, they may also ask questions about your company culture, values, and approach to work-life balance.
These questions help you to identify whether your candidate shares the same values as your organisation/organization. They also provide a behind-the-scenes look at the factors that will engage and motivate your new team members in the future.
For instance, if the first thing your candidate asks about is available development and learning opportunities, you know you’re more likely to keep them motivated and happy in their role by committing to supporting their knowledge.
Enhance Your Employer Brand
Answering candidate questions effectively and insightfully is a great way to strengthen your employer brand. It demonstrates your commitment to delivering an excellent candidate experience through transparent, open, and honest communication.
Even if your candidate decides that the role isn’t right for them, or you choose to hire a different employee, transparently answering questions increases the chances that your candidates will positively review your company on job sites and career pages as well as talking to their friends and current work colleagues about their experience with you.
Boost the Chances of an Accepted Job Offer
Answering candidate questions throughout the recruitment process ensures you can provide them with all the information they need to make an informed decision when you offer them the role.
As you answer questions about things like compensation and benefits, company culture, work-life balance, diversity, equity, and inclusion, you can demonstrate what makes your organisation special. You’ll have an extra chance to draw attention to your unique Employee Value Proposition and remind candidates of why they might want to work with you.
This means you’re less likely to get through the candidate screening and assessment process to have someone reject your offer at the final hurdle.
The Six Most Common Questions Asked by Candidates
Cndidates will have many different questions to ask hiring managers and recruitment teams. These queries often fall into several categories, from questions about company culture and values to examinations of career advancement opportunities.
Let’s start with the most common one.
1. Compensation and Benefits
Today’s candidates aren’t just searching for the highest-paying role or the option that offers the most flexibility. However, they still want to be fairly compensated for their skills, knowledge, and commitment to your company.
Around 40% of candidates in one study said that salary was still one of the most important factors they consider when deciding where to work. However, candidates will want to know more than just how much you will pay them.
Usually, compensation and benefit-based questions will include questions about:
Salary and Pay Structure
Aside from finding out how much they will be paid, candidates will appreciate insights into how your compensation package works for each team member. They may ask for insights into how you perform salary benchmarking strategies to ensure that you have a fair and reasonable approach to the process.
They may also want to know how you identify when salary increases are necessary and how open you are to conducting negotiations at regular periods throughout their career. If your company conducts regular salary reviews, mention this and let applicants know when this happens each year.
Additional Financial Benefits
Depending on the Storefitting and POS or POP role you’re filling, your candidate might expect to be able to access additional financial benefits alongside their standard salary. It’s worth finding out whether employees in other, similar companies are frequently rewarded with bonuses or commissions based on the quality of their work.
Even mentioning the competitions you regularly run with team members, which can include financial benefits as rewards, can help elevate your employee value proposition in the eyes of candidates.
Non-Monetary Benefits
Benefits don’t have to be linked directly to money to appeal to your candidates. Regardless of how competitive your salary is, most candidates, particularly those in the passive talent pool, will expect you to offer additional benefits, such as access to health insurance, retirement plans, and additional extras.
You can look for unique ways to differentiate your company with the benefits you offer based on what you know your candidate’s value. For instance, access to additional holiday time and flexible working opportunities will appeal to people searching for a good work-life balance.
2. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion
According to Glassdoor, two out of three job candidates in every industry now say that they prioritise working for companies with a strong approach to diversity, equality and inclusion. A robust “DEI” strategy shows candidates that their employer values and supports people from all walks of life and backgrounds.
It shows a commitment to emotional intelligence and mutual respect, indicating that employees can expect a more positive company culture.
To examine your approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, candidates will often ask about:
The Diversity of Your Current Team
Employees may ask about the current dynamics of the Retail Environment sector for insights into how many different types of people you have working together. They’ll be looking for evidence that you employ people from various backgrounds.
Draw attention to any diversity initiatives you’ve implemented, such as ensuring executive roles are distributed among people of different genders and races. Focus on how you empower people with varying working styles, disabilities, and challenges to contribute to the team.
You can also demonstrate your approach to cross-functional collaboration and how you support people sharing unique perspectives and opinions.
How do You Maintain Equality?
Preserving equality in the workplace means building a culture where everyone is held accountable for their actions and how they interact with others. Unfortunately, bias and discrimination are common in many workforces.
Explore how your onboarding programmes include additional training to help prepare each team member to work respectfully with people from different ages and backgrounds.
Your Approach to Inclusion
Improving inclusion in the workplace is becoming increasingly difficult as hybrid and remote work strategies continue to gain popularity. Your new candidates will want to see evidence that they’ll be embraced as a valuable part of the team, regardless of whether they work in the office or outside.
Draw attention to how you boost inclusivity through team-building exercises that include remote and in-office employees, peer mentoring projects, and cross-functional collaboration campaigns.
Discuss how you address common issues like language gaps between global employees or feelings of isolation among remote workers.
3. Company Culture and Values
Your approach to Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion as a POS ot POP sector employer will provide useful insights into your company culture and values. However, there’s more to a robust company culture than just a great DEI initiative. Most candidates will want to learn as much as possible about the kind of workplace they will be involved with before accepting a job offer.
Prepare to answer questions about:
Your Leadership Strategy
One of the biggest factors affecting culture in any team is your company’s approach to leading and motivating staff members. Discuss your approach to leadership. Do you embrace a visionary leadership style which encourages every team member to share their insights?
Are you committed to implementing effective feedback loops at work, ensuring team leaders and managers share insights with their employees, and listening to their input in return? How do your leaders motivate staff members and encourage them to cooperate effectively?
Do you regularly train your team leaders to ensure they can keep employees happy and encourage them to give their staff members autonomy at work?
Candidates now have many questions about leadership that need to be answered.
The Company’s Values and Vision
According to a recent Gartner study, today’s Storefitting candidates are looking for purpose in their roles. They want their work to mean something, whether helping make the world better or driving innovation. Be prepared for candidates to ask questions about your mission and vision and give answers that go beyond the simple desire to “make as much money as possible.”
Explain the values that drive your team members, such as a quest for innovation or sustainability, and let candidates know how you champion and preserve those values.
For example, suppose one of your core values is “innovation”. In that case, you might run regular training and brainstorming sessions where you ask employees to share ideas on improving the company.
The Workplace Environment
The environment your business offers candidates is affected by more than ergonomic furniture or great decoration. Many candidates will want to see you invested in building a space conducive to their productivity and well-being.
Share insights into what life is like for your existing employees with candidates, discussing things like your in-house nutritional program, the environments employees use to relax after stressful work sessions, and other unique factors.
Discuss how you create a positive atmosphere by regularly celebrating team and individual wins or using gamification to motivate and inspire everyone.
4. Career Development and Growth Opportunities
Whether starting in your industry or applying for an executive-level role, every candidate in the Retail Environments market will want to see room for growth in your company. This doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be looking for promotions immediately, but they will want to know that you’ll commit to helping them reach their professional and personal growth.
The good news for hiring managers is that questions about career development indicate your candidate has a strong growth mindset and a commitment to lifelong learning, which generally means they’ll be more adaptable and resilient team members.
Prepare to answer questions about:
Career Progression and Succession Plans
If your candidate is applying for a role that offers promotional opportunities, outline your approach to succession planning and progression planning. Explore how your team leaders will regularly communicate with team members to understand their goals and guide them on how to apply for higher-paying roles or take on new responsibilities.
Look at the opportunities you offer staff members to help facilitate career progression, such as mentorship programs/programmes or job shadowing. If you regularly promote internal team members, clarify this to your candidate.
Training and Education
Up to a third of candidates won’t even bother applying for a role if they find that development and training options aren’t available. In today’s Retail Environment space, constantly changing market dynamics, customer preferences, and technologies make constant learning essential.
Show your employees that you’re committed to helping them unlock their full potential with access to a wide range of training resources, such as online courses, workshops, and in-person classes. Focus on your approach to tailoring each training opportunity to the needs of individual employees and draw attention to both soft and hard skill development.
Other Opportunities for Growth
Personal and professional growth opportunities can stem from more than just promotions and training initiatives. You can offer your employees a range of other resources to help them reach their goals, from access to networking opportunities and events to cross-functional collaboration opportunities and peer-to-peer learning experiences.
You might even fund certain external training programs for employees who want to move into new roles that require additional certifications.
5. Work-Life Balance and Flexibility
No matter how dedicated your Storefitting and POS or POP sector employees are, they’ll still want to balance their professional and personal lives effectively. Up to 65% of employees value work-life balance more than exceptional pay and benefits today.
With this in mind, look at how you’ll help your employees maintain good balance. Prepare for questions about:
Flexible Work Arrangements
Do you offer your employees opportunities to work remotely, even part of the time? Can you support flexible schedules if team members need to change their routines suddenly due to personal commitments? If you can’t offer remote work opportunities, can you provide other unique benefits, like a four-day workweek?
If you offer remote or hybrid work policies, know what these working styles entail and your expectations for your flexible workers.
Wellness Initiatives
How often do you invest in protecting your employees’ mental and physical health? Do you offer access to healthy and nutritional food on-site? Do you have your workplace health centre or gym, or provide discounts to employees who want to join a partner gym?
If your employees have issues with stress or burnout, how do you handle these? Are you committed to giving them the flexibility they need to address these issues?
Workplace Boundaries
One specific area that can significantly impact work-life balance in the modern world is a lack of clear workplace boundaries. Make it clear to your employees whether you expect them to work late regularly or respect their choice to say “no” to additional work requests.
Discuss how you help employees switch off when they leave the office by letting them turn off notifications and sign out of common collaboration tools.
6. Organisational Stability and Future Prospects
Finally, while job security has always been a priority for many Storefitting candidates, employees are increasingly concerned about the stability of their organisations. In a difficult economy, around 52% of employees say they’re constantly worrying about job security.
The unfortunate truth is that no company can guarantee their long-term growth and success, but they can reassure candidates by answering questions about:
Current Performance and Growth
If your company is experiencing exceptional growth and great financial results, sharing this information with your candidates can give them peace of mind.
Sharing insights into your next steps and plans for future growth and how you will continue increasing revenue in the years ahead can be helpful.
Job Redeployment Opportunities
Redeployment opportunities can give candidates some much-needed reassurance that they’ll be able to remain with your company, even when issues occur. Letting your candidates know you can search for different positions to move them into if their role becomes unsuitable could help them feel more secure with your company.
Additionally, reminding candidates that you’ll be constantly offering access to upskilling and training opportunities will show them that they should be able to move easily into new opportunities in the future.
Communication Transparency
Last but not least, ensure you’re clear with your candidates about how you transparently communicate about any issues your company might be facing. Discussing your company newsletter and how it keeps team members up-to-date on new challenges and opportunities can help build a foundation of trust.
Providing evidence that you’ll be clear and honest with candidates if you ever encounter problems can make them more likely to accept your job offer.
Effectively Addressing Candidate Questions
All Storefitting and POS/POP sector candidates will have questions before they move into a new role. Accepting your job offer is the only way to ensure they make the right decision for themselves and their future career. Fortunately, answering these questions correctly can boost your chances of enhancing your employer brand and hiring the right team members.
When you’re presented with the questions above, remember to:
Provide as much information as possible
Be detailed when sharing answers about company culture, compensation, development opportunities, etc. Give clear examples and numbers for your candidates to work with, or share documents that can help to answer their questions in more detail.
Be Honest and Transparent
Though you might be trying to “sell” your company to top talent, don’t share inaccurate or exaggerated information. If your business only offers promotional opportunities to employees after they’ve been with your organisation for two years, be direct and upfront about this.
Prepare for Candidate Questions in Advance
Use feedback from your recruitment consultancy, your recruiting team, and your candidates to determine which questions are most common for your company. This will help you prepare documents, FAQs, and other resources you can share when similar queries arise. You could include an FAQ in your onboarding documentation.
Use Active Listening Techniques
When candidates ask questions about a specific role or opportunity, active listening techniques can help ensure you respond best. Repeat their question to check if you understand exactly what they’re asking. Once you’ve given a response, ask them whether you’ve addressed all of their concerns effectively.
Promote Your Employee Value Proposition Constantly
Whenever you’re answering a Storefitting candidate’s question, use it as an opportunity to promote your unique Employee Value Proposition. Constantly draw attention to the unique benefits of working with your company, whether related to your excellent company culture, training initiatives, or approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In Summary
Ultimately, candidates asking questions about your job opportunity isn’t bad. It’s a sign that they genuinely care about ensuring they’re the right fit for your role. It’s also an opportunity to boost your chances of hiring the right candidates by allowing you to showcase your employer brand and employee value proposition.
Once you know which questions your candidates will likely ask, you can prepare effective responses to optimise/optimize your recruitment strategy. Your Glencourt Associates consultant can also help you with this.
Remember to learn as you go and take insights from each interaction with candidates and employees you have. Over time, your approach to answering logical questions directly impacts your hiring success.
About Us
Over the last 34 years, Glencourt Associates have successfully sourced high calibre talent for hundreds of companies servicing the Retail Display market. We have filled more than 1,500 vacancies globally with experienced professional talent, in this market. We are recognised as the leader in this specialist market, of which we are immensely proud.
Glencourt are deeply passionate delivering exceptionally positive experiences through every interaction. We do this through continual connection with passive candidates within our market. We truly live up to maintaining relationships and life-long values.
We provide connections to the best available talent in the Retail Display market. Our goal is to improve the turnover and profitability of our clients through the provision of “Best in Class” talent solutions.
Our “Talent Acquisition Process” can deliver consistent results in the hiring of quality managers and senior executives for businesses like yours.
We can also help you if you need to know more about preparing an Employee Value Proposition.
Contact Us: +44 (0)1342 712253, email jobs@glencourtassociates.com
www.glencourtassociates.com
