Although rejecting candidates isn’t the most pleasant thing to do. There are certain steps you can take to ensure they had a good candidate experience with your company and that you maintain a good relationship with them to apply for future roles.
1. Follow up
Ghosting candidates or simply leaving them hanging isn’t something you should allow your hiring managers to do. Simply sending them an auto-reject email or making a call to notify the candidate they weren’t successful this time is the end of a great candidate experience.
A survey of 4,000 workers found 60% of job applicants who had an interview were “ghosted” by potential employers. Also, 75% who applied to jobs using various resources never heard back from the employer. Remember everybody talks, so the last thing you want is to give your company a bad name for not treating job applicants rights. Treat them well.
2. Candidates could be customers
Virgin media learned the hard way!
In 2014, Virgin Media lost 7,500 customers as a result of direct candidate rejection or poor candidate experience. This was discovered after by the Virgin Media’s insights team, who looked at who was a customer before or at the start of the recruitment process and cross-referencing this with who canceled within 4 weeks of the end of that process.
They soon discovered that the final figure due to giving their candidates a bad candidate experience translated into roughly £4.4 million in lost revenue and quickly addressed the situation. So you see how important it is to make sure to engage with your candidates.
3. Personalise your auto emails
Sending generic emails like: ‘we will be in touch in 2 weeks’ or ‘sorry you have been unsuccessful this time’ lack the human element. If you have auto emails set up use them as touch points.
If you won’t be hiring for another 2 weeks let candidates know why and that you will be in touch then. If they are unsuccessful redirect them to your careers page and let them know about future upcoming opportunities Rezoomo allows companies to easily post future roles that candidates can apply for months in advance and for you to build up a talent pipeline. Auto emails are great to save time but don’t forget to add a little bit of human to them.
