The labor market lately is full of great job offers and lack of unemployed professionals. That makes the better qualified workers to be more fussy about the job offers and perks. Nowadays, this potential well-qualified worker with impressive experience can call the shots. This is why the companies, more than ever, should take care of their employer branding. You think that it’s a piece of cake? Not at all! Remember, that a huge part of that is keeping a positive candidate experience, especially of those, who were rejected in the recruitment process. Maybe it’s not the last time they are dealing with your recruiter?

Not so long ago, the media was thrilled with the story of 18 year old girl, which received a short SMS after the job interview  – informing her about the rejection in the recruitment process. Not only did she receive it just few minutes after leaving the office, where she had the interview – but also the reason of rejection was… unusual and unprofessional. You can see this conversation here:

(source)

The media got completely hyped up by this case and despite engaging the company representatives and explanations, that this message was not directed to her, but to the manager of the restaurant she was applying to – it had a negative impact on the good name of the restaurant. People, identifying with the teenager, started ostracizing the restaurant.

If you respect your applicants (I am more than sure, that you do!) you certainly keep up to these 3 rules:

1. No matter of the result (rejection, or moving to next step) the candidate should always receive a feedback. Respecting him means in this case giving him the feedback as soon as possible. In Poland, the research shows that only 17% candidates get the feedback, when getting rejected.
2. Standing by the arrangements, especially deadlines. If you declare giving feedback in less than 2 weeks – you need to give it back in the promised time. If the decision making takes more time than it was assumed, the candidates should also be informed about that. If not, they can feel ignored and get the impression of the company being unreliable. Their prejudice can affect the company’s name also as future clients.
3. Feedback is a must. If not straight away, with the information about rejection, but surely on the candidate’s demand. Research shows, that almost every candidate would like to know the reason he didn’t pass to the next step. It is a very important information for the candidates to get to know his weaknesses, but also what does he need to improve to increase his chances in the future.

This is the most difficult part of recruiters work, to explain that thruthfully and diplomatically. 

I was lately in touch with a person looking for a new job and applying to many companies, so I gathered some first hand information – how does it look right now. Let’s look at the numbers – considering 12 applications sent:

- in 6 of them she didn’t receive any feedback, even a confirmation or thanks from the company for applying,

- 1 company sent only confirmation of receiving the application,

- 2 companies informed about rejection in less than 4 weeks.

The other 3 processes ended up like this:

-       After a long and demanding recruitment process she was promised to receive a feedback in 2 weeks. It was almost 2 months ago and she didn’t get it till today,

-       The company offered a job interviewed… 2 months after applying,

-       Professional and permanent contact with the recruiter, promptness and very good impression - despite of the candidate resignation after getting the final offer.

How to avoid fails like these? If the recruiter send many messages every day, mistakes can happen. Fortunatelly, some ATS systems recruiters use – like Traffit - have features that help: like allowing its users to send personalized e-mails or even notifications, when their status changes. This notification can look like this:

E-mails and notifications should be personalized and sent separately, to avoid fails like the popular one in Poland with a headhunter, that sent a job offer to 500 potential candidates (source) by adding all of their e-mail adresses  in the receivers field. This way, the candidates treated it as SPAM – what’s more, many on them was really annoyed, that their personal e-mail got into unknown hands. Some of them had a job and was really furious that everyone found out, that they were in contact with a headhunter. The list was a tasty morsel for other headhunters, because it included many IT specialists. Some decided to use this candidate database for their personal business, for example one person sent an e-mail with the link to his advertisement about a car for sale, by using the “Reply to all” button.

If you invest in good HR tools, you can avoid fails and focus on the best and nicest part of recruiters work – talking with people :)

You want to read the post in polish? You can do it here.