Have you started noticing the reneges? The ghosting? The slow fade of disengaged applicants who once seemed all in?
89% of candidates continue interviewing even after accepting an offer, according to a recent survey of our student community.
Trust is clearly fractured, and companies are paying the price.
There’s a growing gap between recruiting effort and candidate engagement, and the symptoms that follow (disengagement, ghosting, and reneges) are all signs of a broken candidate experience.
Traditional recruitment cycles, slow, opaque, and impersonal, are no longer meeting candidate expectations.
Now, trust and transparency are central to early-career hiring decisions.
Candidates want clear timelines, fast responses, and honesty even when the answer is ‘no.’ Yet most systems are still optimized for internal efficiency rather than candidate clarity.
How Candidates Interpret Silence, Delays, and Unclear Processes
These signals shape how candidates feel about your company long before an offer.
When you’re asking yourself how to improve the candidate experience, you must first take a step back and put yourself in their shoes.
At Rewriting the Code, we’ve analyzed thousands of survey responses from Gen Z tech job seekers. Candidates tell us: silence creates anxiety, unclear processes breed confusion, and delays feel like rejection. For early-career talent, these moments define how they see your brand.
And in the age of Glassdoor, one poor experience doesn’t disappear; it multiplies.
Why Trust Drives Engagement and Offer Acceptance
According to Career Plug, 76% of candidates said that a positive candidate experience influenced their decision to accept an offer.
And with 53% of candidates citing that they’ve been ghosted by employers, silence reinforces the perception that the company isn’t interested, or worse, doesn’t respect their time.
The message is clear: candidate experience isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a decision driver.
How to Create a More Inclusive Candidate Experience
Want candidates to stay engaged and actually show up on Day 1?
Here are three core principles we recommend every company adopt:
- Clear, accessible communication at every stage
- Predictable and transparent recruiting processes
- Respect for candidate time and emotional investment
These aren’t perks, they’re table stakes for early-career talent.
Get these right, and you’ll stand out in a crowded hiring market. Miss them, and candidates will move on, often silently.
“I feel like only my skills, resume, and cover letter are in my control. Interviews seem based on luck and how much prep time you have.”
Improving Candidate Experience Is a Long-Term Recruiting Advantage
Better candidate experience leads to stronger relationships, not just filled roles. In a time when reneges are rising, you want to have strong relationships with your recruits in order to hedge the potential for last-minute declines.
Because when offers fall through, relationships are your safety net. And strong candidate experience builds those relationships before Day 1.
Ready to Improve Candidate Experience and See Fewer Reneges?
Download the Recruiting Experience Report to get inside the mindset of today’s early-career candidates. You’ll learn:
- What top talent expects at each stage of the recruiting process
- Where trust breaks down and how to rebuild it
- Practical, research-backed ways to boost offer acceptance
Don’t wait until another offer falls through. Get ahead of the trust gap today.
Connect with our team to build a reliable, early-stage pipeline of high-quality CS talent before Day 1.