A candidate experience survey asks the people who went through your hiring process how it actually felt. Choose your audience, pick questions by stage, and copy out a ready-to-send survey for whatever platform you already use.
The audience changes the wording of the introduction. Surveying rejected candidates is uncomfortable and it is also where the useful answers live — people who got the job rarely tell you what was wrong with the process.
A shorter survey that people finish beats a thorough one they abandon. Twelve questions are selected to start — cut rather than add unless you have a specific stage you are trying to diagnose.
Where most drop-off happens, and where it is cheapest to fix
Silence is the complaint candidates raise most often
What the process signalled about the company
Ask rejected candidates too — that is where the honest answers are
The two questions worth trending over time
12 questions · roughly 4 minutes to complete
CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE SURVEY Send to: everyone who reached at least a first interview 12 questions · roughly 4 minutes Thank you for going through our hiring process. We are trying to make it better, and the only people who can tell us where it falls short are the people who have been through it. Your answers take about 4 minutes and are used only to improve how we hire. --- APPLYING --- [0–10 scale] How easy was it to find this role and understand what it involved? [Yes / No] Did the job description match the role as it was described later in the process? --- COMMUNICATION --- [0–10 scale] How well were you kept informed about where you were in the process? [Yes / No] Did you know what the next step and rough timing would be at each stage? --- INTERVIEWING --- [0–10 scale] How well prepared did your interviewers seem? [0–10 scale] Were the questions relevant to the work the role actually involves? [0–10 scale] Did you get a realistic picture of the role, the team and the challenges? [0–10 scale] How was the scheduling handled — booking, rescheduling, joining instructions? --- DECISION AND OUTCOME --- [Yes / No] Was the outcome communicated clearly and within the timeframe you were given? [0–10 scale] Did the process feel fair? --- OVERALL --- [0–10 scale] How likely are you to recommend applying here to someone in your network? [Free text] If you could change one thing about the process, what would it be? --- ANYTHING ELSE --- [Free text] Is there anything else you would like to tell us?
The completion-time figure is arithmetic on the number of questions, not a research finding. Deliberately there is no benchmark here for what a good score looks like — published candidate-experience averages vary hugely with industry and with how the survey was sent, so grading yourself against one tells you very little. Run it once to set your own baseline, change one thing, run it again. Movement against your own numbers is the signal.
Scheduling gaps, late feedback and silence are the three complaints this survey surfaces most. See how Pitch N Hire closes them — self-scheduling, scorecards due before the next stage, and status every candidate can see.
Most teams that run a candidate survey send it to new hires, which is the least informative group possible. Someone who just accepted an offer is describing a process that ended in their favour, and they are also about to work for you, which is not a setting that encourages criticism. The candidates who dropped out after a scheduling mess, or who waited nine days for feedback that never came, are the ones who can tell you what is broken — and they are also the ones telling their networks about it either way. Surveying them is uncomfortable and it is where the useful answers are. Say plainly that responses do not affect future applications, keep it short, and expect the first round to be blunter than you would like. That bluntness is the product.
The complaints that come back are remarkably consistent, and they are almost always process rather than judgement. Candidates do not usually object to being rejected; they object to not being told. They do not object to interviewing; they object to a fourth round appearing that nobody mentioned, to an interviewer who clearly had not read their CV, and to a week of email tennis to find a slot. Each of those has a mechanical fix. Self-scheduling removes the email tennis, a scorecard due before the next stage is booked removes the feedback lag, and an agreed stage count at intake removes the surprise round. If your survey keeps returning the same three, the answer is not a better survey — it is fixing how interviews get scheduled and closing the loop with every applicant, not only the shortlist.
Silence and scheduling friction are what these surveys surface most. See how Pitch N Hire keeps status visible, feedback on time and scheduling out of your inbox.
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