The Candidate is your HERO
You should ALWAYS ‘get back’ to your candidates. There’s no excuse.
According to StaffingIndustry.com, 75% of people would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation — even if they were unemployed. This includes the experience of the candidate journey.
Whether you are an owner managed business growing their first team or a multi-national conglomerate processing thousands of new hires a year, you have the ability to respond to your candidates & applicants. I’ve worked in both types of organisation & have managed to maintain high quality and care standards for the candidate journey.
It really boils down to that. Caring.
When you’ve worked in talent acquisition/recruitment for over a decade, you’ve pretty much heard every excuse. “I don’t have the time…”, “We’ve got too many roles on to get back to EVERY candidate/applicant…”, “They weren’t right for the role, so why waste time?”
There’s always been a single quality of a certain type of recruiter that stands out for me.
They care. They care about the candidate journey and they care about finding the right fit for their stakeholders or clients. They protect the company’s brand, they consider the talent pipeline as well as immediate requirements and they want to do the best for people.
Recruiters & Hiring Managers now have a vast number of ATS software at their fingertips, which streamlines the process. I’ve used the likes of SmartRecruiter, Greenhouse & Hire and all have the ability to group applications into relevant role ‘pods’, send automated emails and generally stay organised in your process.
I used to do all of this from an excel spreadsheet back in the day…
Let’s add some reality into the situation.
No-one is saying you must reply to every single candidate with a detailed breakdown of why they weren’t selected, at whatever stage. That would be far too time consuming & ineffective for your role. What is the sweet spot to achieve balance?
I’ve always adopted the following:
Application Stage — An automated rejection email is fine, as long as it’s within a week of an application. The candidate receives acknowledgement & this can be done in bulk. DO NOT leave this longer than a week — it’s rude and leaves a bad taste.
Screening Call Stage — A personalised email from the recruiter stating the outcome with a learning point. You’re delivering bad news to someone you may have built a relationship with. Leave a good impression so they have something positive & constructive.
Interview Stage — Call them. Every time. Your role as a recruiter or hiring manager is to be an ambassador for the brand. This role could have been the difference between them experiencing a lot of stress this month or not. Give them objective, constructive feedback and thank them for their time.
You are probably one of the internal recruiters that monitors the NPS & it’s an important KPI of your performance metrics, so why shouldn’t the candidate journey experience have its own metric? Be its own target?
These people may not be right for the current role, but they have their own network, their own goals & motivations and could be the perfect candidate for another role in the future.
This is another key indicator of a great recruiter — they’re constantly thinking about future demand and managing expectations with internal & external stakeholders. They’re adding value through strategic thinking, rather than transactional processes.
Which recruiter are you?
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