I recently did some work for a large retailer who’s executives kept talking about increasing their customer base and of course their profits. While conductiong  a recruitment audit it was clear that all candidate tracking was being done on spreadsheets with zero candidate follow- up unless the candidate was the chosen one of the day. When I suggested to senior executives that they should follow- up on each and every resume with at least an automated response thanking candidates for their time, they could not understand why anyone would want to do that.

Mistake #1.

After I explained to them that each potential candidate could be a current or potential customer the lights slowing started coming on upstairs. When I went on and discussed the negative impact on these potential customers if they received no response to their employment offer or an unprofessional one their eyes glazed over. They really did not care about the candidates and felt that they could sway the candidate to shop there anyway.

Mistake #2.

I believe that the recruitment function can have a positive impact on increasing a companies customer base, profits and of course the publics view of the brand. Here’s what I did with one customer recently. I developed an automated “Thank you No thank you response. Nothing genial here. But what we also did is integrate a special discount coupon targeted to our candidate segment, ie: younger candidates would get a special 25% of on electronics, brand clothing, etc..while older segments would get discounts on travel, upscale fashion, fragrance, etc… You get it right.

Candidates received a printable document with a special scannable code for recruitment tracking metrics that allowed the company to track purchases associated with the recruitment effort. Although in it’s early stages, the program shows great success and of course we are contionusly tweaking it to make it even better. Think out of the box, almost every industry recruitment function can be a profit generator.

So don’t act so superior around candidates no matter how they match up to your spec, they are the ones that may be holding the axe on your job in the near future.

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