The secret to award-winning candidate experiences that work at scale

Unseen has been named The Candidate Experience Solution of the Year at the TIARA Talent Acquisition & Talent Tech Awards.

Here’s a look behind the curtain at what it takes to make a complex recruitment journey clear, fair and human.

In early careers programmes, high-volume recruitment and wider talent acquisition, employers often struggle with fragmented candidate experiences.

Managing each element of the process across different stages, workstreams and systems can lead to disjointed experiences that affect candidate engagement, role understanding, workplace readiness and ultimately create a gap between the brand employers set out to create and the one that candidates end up experiencing.

Earlier offers and longer lead times can stretch the journey, while greater candidate choice and AI-assisted applications place more pressure on employers to keep those in the pipeline informed and engaged.

It is now more important than ever to deliver a high quality, seamless, and engaging candidate experience. After all the work employers do to attract candidates, commitment can no longer be assumed.

At Unseen, we see candidate experience as more than a series of touchpoints. It is holistic, across every interaction, every interview, and every test. It is shaped by how clearly candidates understand the opportunity, how fairly they can demonstrate their strengths, and how supported they feel as they move towards starting work.

The impact on candidates and hiring teams

Better candidate experience is closely connected to business performance: clearer journeys can strengthen engagement and preparedness, consistent assessment can help hiring teams make more confident decisions and reducing avoidable friction in processes gives teams more time to focus on the people behind each application.

“Winning the Candidate Experience Solution of the Year in the TIARA awards is meaningful recognition of what our teams and clients achieve together. Our submission reflects work across the candidate journey, from authentic employee stories and clearer communication to fairer, more consistent assessment and support from offer through to day one.”

Our success stories include operational and candidate experience measures across different parts of the journey, from candidate preparedness and views of assessment to the practical demands on hiring teams.

At Royal Mail, 94% registered for the onboarding platform, and email enquiries fell by 69%. At Kier Group, graduate recruitment volumes increased by 40%, and all assessors surveyed reported a significant improvement compared with the previous platform. At Toyota GB, candidates rated redesigned assessment-centre exercises 5.48 out of 6 for allowing them to demonstrate their skills and abilities, and 5.71 out of 6 for relevance to the placement.

Together, these results show that candidate experience and operational performance can support one another.

“What matters most to me is the difference this makes for candidates and hiring teams. At Royal Mail, 83% of candidates said they felt more prepared for day one, alongside a 50% reduction in attrition. I’m proud of the expertise and care behind this work, and grateful to our clients for their trust and collaboration.”

A connected approach to candidate experience

Our method at Unseen is to bring together talent strategy, recruitment expertise, vendor-agnostic HR technology advice, assessment science, specialist technology and authentic storytelling to help employers attract, assess, select and onboard people in a practical, scalable and evidence-informed way.

Our award-winning solutions support employers to make their processes easier to navigate without making them feel impersonal, even at scale.

Making the journey work at scale starts with clarity and communication.

Candidates need an honest sense of the organisation and role, and support that continues beyond the initial application. Seenit helps employers bring employee stories into attraction, while Meet&Engage supports clear communication and onboarding.

Assessment needs to be relevant to the role and consistent for every candidate.

Our assessment psychologists help define what good looks like and shape the exercises, with Evolve Assess enabling bespoke tools such as SJTs and psychometrics. Oneway supports smoother digital interviewing and selection experiences, reducing friction and improving consistency. ,while TopScore supports delivery at scale.

Your strategy and tools need to be scalable and tailored.

For early careers programmes, Ladder brings recruitment and delivery expertise, and Udder helps employers select and implement HR technology that fits their needs.

All of our capabilities have distinct roles, but candidates experience one journey. Taken together, the experience is one that is easier for candidates to navigate and more effective for employers to deliver.

Better candidate experiences, built together

This award is an endorsement of the practical work we do with our partners: making complex hiring journeys work better for candidates and employers. We are incredibly proud of this achievement and thankful to the employers we work with who are just as committed as we are to delivering industry-leading candidate experiences.

More importantly, we will keep working with employers to build talent journeys that are scalable, fair and human, and give candidates a clearer, more considered experience from first interaction to day one.