A candidate experience survey you can send this afternoon.
Fifteen questions covering the application, the communication gap, the interviews, interviewer conduct, fairness and the decision. Copy them as written, or run them here, where an AI follow-up asks candidates what happened in their own words.
How fair did the overall process feel to you?
Which stage did that happen at, and what did you expect instead?
The third round was added after I’d already been told the second was final. Nobody explained why.
Candidate feedback on your recruitment process, question by question.
Fifteen questions, grouped by the stage they ask about, so a low score points at something you can fix. Replace the bracketed placeholders with your company and role names, and route the two decision questions with display logic so nobody is asked the wrong one.
Applying
The part of your process candidates hit before they ever meet a person.
- 1How easy was it to find clear information about the role before you applied? (1 = Very difficult, 5 = Very easy)
- 2How long did the application itself take you to complete?
- 3Did the job description match the role as it was described in your interviews? (Yes / Mostly / No)
Communication
Ask about updates between stages separately from the interviews themselves.
- 4How well were you kept informed about where you were in the process? (1 = Very poorly, 5 = Very well)
- 5Were the next steps and the timeline explained clearly at each stage? (1 = Not at all, 5 = Completely)
The interviews
Ask about the sessions themselves, separately from the people who ran them.
- 6How well did the interviews give you a realistic picture of the job? (1 = Not at all, 5 = Extremely well)
- 7Were the questions you were asked relevant to the role? (1 = Not at all, 5 = Extremely)
- 8Did you get enough opportunity to ask your own questions? (Yes / Somewhat / No)
Interviewer conduct
Keep it behavioral. "Were they nice?" produces an answer nobody can act on.
- 9How prepared did your interviewers seem? (1 = Not at all prepared, 5 = Very prepared)
- 10How respectfully were you treated throughout the process? (1 = Not at all, 5 = Extremely)
Fairness
Ask it plainly, then give people room to say what happened.
- 11How fair did the overall process feel to you? (1 = Very unfair, 5 = Very fair)
- 12Was there any point where you felt you were not evaluated on your ability to do the job? If so, tell us what happened.
The decision
Two branches, one per outcome. Route them so each candidate sees one.
- 13If you accepted the offer: what made the difference in your decision? If you declined, withdrew, or were not selected: what one change would most have improved the experience?
Would you recommend applying
The pair worth trending. Everything above explains a move in this number.
- 14How likely are you to recommend applying to [Company] to a friend or colleague? (0 = Not at all likely, 10 = Extremely likely)
- 15What is the main reason for your score?
When to send it, and who to send it to
Send within a week of the decision, while the detail is still recoverable. A month later you get a mood rather than a memory.
Include the candidates you rejected. They are most of your sample and all of your reputational exposure, and theirs are the scores that end up on review sites.
Keep it anonymous and say so in the first line. A candidate who thinks a bad score gets back to their interviewer will not give you one.
The last two questions are the pair worth trending: a 0 to 10 recommendation score and the reason behind it. Put the role and hiring manager in the survey link so each response carries them into your export.
Most candidate feedback is collected from the people who got the job.
Onboarding surveys are easy to run and comfortable to read, because they ask the one group whose experience ended well. The candidate who withdrew after the third unscheduled round, and the one who never heard back at all, are not in that sample, and they are the ones writing about you in public.
A candidate experience survey earns its place by asking the whole funnel, close to the decision, about specific stages rather than overall impressions. That turns a bad number into something fixable. "Our process is poor" becomes "four days pass between the second and third round and nobody tells them".
Send it. Probe it. Read it by stage.
The questions above are the whole instrument. What the platform adds is the follow-up and the themes.
Send
One link, everyone who interviewed.
Accepted, declined and rejected candidates get the same survey within a week of the decision. If you promise anonymity, turn on Minimize IP and location data.
Probe
The follow-up does the digging.
When someone writes that a stage felt unfair, the AI follow-up asks what happened, in the same sitting, while the detail is still there.
Read
Themes for each stage.
The AI report groups open answers into themes, so "communication" becomes the specific gap people describe.
Or start from a template already in the catalog.
Candidate experience, recruitment process feedback, and new-hire orientation starters you can preview and edit before sending.
Structured interviewer feedback about candidates.
Candidate experience is one side of the ledger. The other is what your interviewers write down about candidates, and free-text notes typed up an hour after the debrief invite inconsistent hiring decisions.
Run the scorecard as its own short survey, sent to each interviewer right after their session and submitted before the debrief. Put the candidate’s ID in each scorecard link, and the scorecards for one candidate line up in your export.
- A fixed scorecard per role, so everyone rates the same competencies
- An evidence field beside each rating, for the example behind the number
- Submitted before the debrief, so the room doesn’t anchor on whoever talks first
- A candidate ID in the scorecard link, exported with each scorecard
What an AI follow-up adds to a feedback form.
A rating of 2 on fairness says something went wrong and nothing about what. On a normal form you either let it sit there or email the candidate a week later and hear nothing back.
Here the follow-up happens in the same sitting. Put an AI follow-up on the open question after the rating, and it asks which stage, which moment, and what they expected instead.
- Follows up in the same sitting
- Asks for the specific stage and the specific moment
- Runs as text in any browser, with no login
- Open answers grouped into themes in the AI report
Something to bring to the hiring review.
A recommendation score
The 0 to 10 question and its reason. Put the role and hiring manager in the link to split the score in your export.
Themes by stage
Application, communication, interviews and the decision, each with the comments behind it.
Candidates’ own words
Quotes pulled out in the report are checked against what candidates wrote. Nothing is redacted automatically, so read them before they go into a deck.
Built for the people who own the funnel.
Ask the candidates you didn’t hire.Start on the Free plan.
Copy the fifteen questions above, or run them here with follow-ups attached. Free includes 20 visible responses a month across your account, with no credit card.