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Part of What candidate experience survey questions should UK employers ask?
What candidate experience survey questions should UK employers ask?
Candidate experience survey questions for UK employers, covering each hiring stage, UK GDPR consent, the Equality Act 2010 and what to do with the answers.
What to take away
- Ask stage-specific questions about application, interview, offer and onboarding, and keep an interview survey to six items or fewer.
- Set out the lawful basis, privacy notice, retention period and opt-out before the first invitation, following ICO guidance on UK GDPR.
- Keep questions about age, disability, ethnicity, religion or gender inside anonymised monitoring, where the Equality Act 2010 sets the boundary.
- Compare your replies with official employment data rather than treating a small sample as a verdict on your hiring.
Candidate feedback is its own data source
Employer brand measurement usually leans on vacancy counts, careers site traffic and advertising spend. Candidate experience answers a different question: what the process felt like to the person inside it. A rejection email with no reason, or three weeks of silence, becomes the story a candidate repeats to friends.
That is why the questions should describe observable events rather than ask for a score out of ten, and why the survey belongs next to response times in your measurement plan.
Set the legal groundwork before you ask
A feedback request is processing personal data, even when the reply appears anonymously in your report. You need a lawful basis, a privacy notice the candidate can read before answering, a retention period, and a route out that does not affect the application. The ICO publishes the working detail in its UK GDPR guidance.
Legal groundwork before asking
- Record lawful basis and deletion date
- Put privacy notice link in invitation
- Give one person access to responses
- Diarise the deletion date
Questions that work at each stage
Stage matters more than eloquence. A candidate rejected at screening cannot answer a question about onboarding, and an offer-stage candidate reads a salary question as negotiation. Cut the set below to fit the stage.
Questions by hiring stage
Stage
- Application
- How easy was the form?
- Screening
- Did you know what next?
- Interview
- Did questions match the advert?
- Offer
- Was the offer explained in writing?
- Onboarding
- Did the first week match?
Question to ask
- Application
- Form friction
- Screening
- Communication
- Interview
- Role accuracy
- Offer
- Administration
- Onboarding
- Promise accuracy
What it measures
- Application
- Long free-text boxes
- Screening
- Promising dates you miss
- Interview
- Asking for a score out of ten
- Offer
- Mixing survey with negotiation
- Onboarding
- Surveying before contract signed
Fault to avoid
- Application
- Screening
- Interview
- Offer
- Onboarding
| Stage | Question to ask | What it measures | Fault to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Application | How easy was the form to complete on the device you used? | Form friction | Long free-text boxes |
| Screening | Did you know what would happen next, and when? | Communication | Promising dates you then miss |
| Interview | Did the panel's questions match the advert? | Role accuracy | Asking for a score out of ten |
| Interview | Could you ask what you needed to? | Two-way process | Treating the answer as an interviewer appraisal |
| Offer | Was the offer explained in writing within the agreed time? | Administration | Mixing the survey with negotiation |
| Onboarding | Did the first week match what recruitment promised? | Promise accuracy | Surveying before the contract is signed |
If you need a tool, judge it on documented data handling before you promise candidates anonymity you cannot keep. Our comparison of survey platform documentation sets out what Microsoft Forms and Qualtrics publish about storage, access and deletion.
Where regulated employers need extra care
NHS trusts, care providers and financial services firms often recruit people who later become patients, service users or regulated clients. Keep candidate feedback out of any clinical, safeguarding or compliance record, and never ask a candidate to comment on a named individual's conduct.
Extra care for regulated employers
- Keep feedback out of clinical records
- Never ask about a named individual
- Use separate voluntary monitoring section
- Compare replies with national ONS patterns
- State who was invited
"Were you treated with respect?" draws a sharper answer inside an NHS trust than "rate the candidate journey".
Monitoring questions on ethnicity, disability, religion or sexual orientation belong in a separate, voluntary section used for equalities reporting, not selection. The Equality Act 2010 governs how that data may be used.
A small survey will not tell you what the whole candidate pool thinks. Compare replies with national patterns using the ONS employment and employee types release, and state who was invited.
Turning answers into a decision
One round of feedback rarely justifies a change of process. Look for the same complaint appearing at the same stage across two or three hiring rounds, then pick one fix and name its owner.
Tie the findings to measures you already report, so the survey does not sit in a separate folder. Our guide to recruitment marketing metrics shows which stage-level figures leadership already expects to see each month.
Keep the promise you make at the start
Tell candidates how long the survey takes, whether replies are seen by the hiring panel, and what happens to the data. If the panel will see quotes, say so before the first question. Trust built here carries into the offer conversation.
Common questions
How many questions should a post-interview survey have?
Six or fewer, and no more than one open text box. Long surveys lose the candidates who had the worst experience, which is exactly the group you need to hear from.
Can we ask candidates about protected characteristics?
Yes, for equalities monitoring, provided the section is voluntary and separated from the selection record. The Equality Act 2010 governs how that data may be used.
Should we survey candidates rejected at application stage?
Yes. Form-stage rejection is the most common candidate experience, so it says most about your advert. Ask two questions and send the invitation separately from the rejection email.
How long should we keep candidate feedback?
Set the period when you write the privacy notice and delete the data on that date. Keep only the aggregated figures you report.
