As a Director of Talent Acquisition who has been on the job market as a candidate for the last number of months, I can tell you that every company I interview with talks about Candidate Experience and yet 90% of them fail at just about every level of what that means in practice.   Here are just a few of the offenses.
*Abominable Online Resume Submission processes
*The waste of a candidate’s time by not asking key questions in the phone screen (relo, comp,interest)
*Lack of acknowledgement of candidates post interview email
*Allowing finalist candidates under serious consideration go weeks/months with no contact
*Disappearing post interview and not closing the loop, leaving candidates guessing if they are still under consideration
*Sending a Thanks But No Thanks email 8 months after a job was applied to
*Sending a TBNT email that has no reference to the company or position to which it relates
*Telling candidates in the initial phone screen that “well you have been out of work a while, I would think you would be more willing to take a large salary cut” or ” we know the job market is bad so we have been able to actually lower our comp in the last year”

Companies keep acting as if there are thousands of highly qualified candidates for their jobs, yet I see many of these jobs open 4, 6 , 8 months or more. 

The Candidate Experience begins with RESPECT for the Candidate.  All of the items on your list of suggestions cascade from that point.  

(With all the burgeoning talk of candidate experience, I wonder if we should make a distinction between “applicant” and “candidate”.  They seem to be used interchangeably.  For the purpose of this comment, I’ll use candidate to mean both.)I’m all for making the candidate experience a positive one, for two reasons.  First, it simply makes good business sense to be a company whose actions show it believes it’s an integral part of society and is respectful of other stakeholders (especially if a company sells directly to consumers).  Secondly, while there are no laws that require courtesy, companies are  made up of people, just like you and me, and they should communicate accordingly. There should be no dispensation because people can hide behind a company name.  But to play devil’s advocate, I will say that one reason why companies don’t provide “reason for rejection” to candidates is that some will vehemently disagree and continue to push their case.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing (they may be right), but it’s time consuming and most recruiters, whose job is very labor intensive, are loath to spend unproductive time trying to convince someone who’s not convincible.  And not to mention the potential for someone saying the wrong thing and getting slapped with a lawsuit.Still, I do believe the candidate experience needs improvement.  Yet, there’s one aspect of this forward thinking that I must disagree with…the concept of candidate as “customer”.  That’s just inaccurate.  Look at any definition and you’ll see that a customer is one who receives or consumes goods or services and has the ability to choose between different products and suppliers. In fact, I would go so far as to say the employer is the customer and the candidate is more akin to a vendor.   Today, I am a vendor.  In years past, I was a candidate.  In my experience, trying to get the attention of companies that may be able to use my skills is eerily similar in both cases.Why do I think the distinction is important? Because I believe we do a disservice to candidates when we lead them to believe that they should be given the red carpet treatment, when in reality it’s the candidate who knows how to compete that will win. I think it’s especially important that we don’t lead new generations of workers down the wrong job search path.  Do they deserve common courtesy?  Absolutely, as we all do.   But as a provider of services, candidates need to know how to compete; how to sell themselves.