Candidate NPS adapts the Net Promoter Score framework — originally developed by Fred Reichheld to measure customer loyalty — to the recruiting context. The core question is: on a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend [Company] as a place to apply for a job?
Respondents are segmented into three groups: Promoters (scores 9-10) are highly satisfied candidates who would actively recommend the application experience; Passives (7-8) are satisfied but not enthusiastic; Detractors (0-6) had a poor enough experience that they might actively warn others against applying. The cNPS is calculated as: (% Promoters) minus (% Detractors), producing a score between -100 and +100.
The power of cNPS is that it measures the full candidate population — including rejected candidates who represent the majority of everyone who experiences your process. An organisation might have a 5% hire rate, meaning 95% of people who experience the process are not hired. If those 95% had a poor experience, the employer brand impact is 19 times larger than the impact of the 5% who are hired. cNPS captures this majority-experience signal.
cNPS should be collected at multiple points in the process — post-application, post-interview, and post-offer (both accepted and declined) — to identify where in the journey experience quality is highest and where it drops. This granular data directs process improvement toward the stages that most need attention.
Key Points: Candidate NPS
- NPS formula: (% Promoters 9-10) minus (% Detractors 0-6) = cNPS, ranging from -100 to +100.
- Rejected candidate inclusion: The most valuable signal comes from the majority who are not hired — they represent your largest candidate experience cohort.
- Multi-stage collection: Collecting cNPS at application, interview, and outcome stages pinpoints where the experience is strongest and weakest.
- Follow-up question: The open-ended question ('What is the main reason for your score?') provides the qualitative context that makes the number actionable.
- Benchmarking: Industry benchmarks for cNPS allow comparison with comparable organisations, adding context to your absolute score.
How Candidate NPS Works in Treegarden
Candidate NPS in Treegarden
Treegarden supports candidate satisfaction surveys at configurable pipeline stages. Survey responses are stored against candidate records and aggregated into experience metrics in the analytics dashboard. Recruiters can see cNPS scores by job, stage, and hiring manager, identifying which parts of the process are generating the strongest and weakest candidate experience and prioritising improvements accordingly.
Related HR Glossary Terms
Frequently Asked Questions About Candidate NPS
Candidate NPS benchmarks vary by industry and role type. As a general guide, a score above +40 is considered strong; +20 to +40 is acceptable; 0 to +20 indicates room for improvement; negative scores indicate significant candidate experience problems that are likely affecting employer brand. Talent Board's Candidate Experience Research benchmarks suggest that best-in-class organisations achieve cNPS scores of +50 or higher. Glassdoor interview satisfaction ratings — which are publicly visible — correlate with cNPS but are not identical: they capture a subset of candidates who choose to review, while properly administered cNPS surveys capture a more representative sample. Context matters: a company in a highly competitive talent market may have a lower cNPS than a company in a market with more candidate supply, simply because the hiring standard is higher and more candidates are rejected.
Candidate NPS surveys are most valuable when sent promptly after a defined experience touchpoint — while the experience is fresh and before subsequent events color the memory. A post-application survey (sent within 24-48 hours of application submission) captures the experience of the application process itself. A post-interview survey (sent within 24 hours of the interview, before the candidate knows the outcome) captures the experience of the evaluation process separately from the outcome. A post-outcome survey (sent after a hiring decision is communicated, to both accepted and rejected candidates) captures the overall process experience and, importantly, how the communication of the outcome was handled. Response rates are highest for surveys sent promptly and kept short — a single NPS question plus one open-ended follow-up question generates higher completion rates than multi-question experience surveys.
Rejected candidates are the most important segment to survey for several reasons. They represent the vast majority of everyone who experiences your process — in typical hiring funnels, 80-95% of applicants are not hired. Their experience of rejection — how it was communicated, whether they received feedback, whether they felt treated with respect — is a significant employer brand signal that is disproportionately influential because rejection is a more emotionally memorable event than acceptance. Rejected candidates who had a positive experience despite not being hired are potential referral sources, future applicants for different roles, and potential customers. Those who had a poor experience are more likely to share negative reviews. Knowing their experience — and specifically why they rate it the way they do — is essential for understanding and improving the actual employer brand impact of your recruiting process.
Improving a low cNPS requires first identifying which touchpoints are generating the most negative responses — which is why collecting at multiple stages and asking the open-ended follow-up question is so important. Common findings in organisations with low cNPS scores include: long delays between application and any response, which is the single most common frustration; application processes that are too long for the early stage; generic rejection communications with no acknowledgement of the specific candidate's application; interview scheduling processes with multiple rounds of back-and-forth emails; and interviewers who arrive unprepared, are late, or spend the interview reading the CV for the first time. Each of these has a specific process fix that can be implemented quickly and tracked through subsequent cNPS scores.