Congratulations on finding the perfect person for your role! Now, what are you going to do with all those resumes that you no longer need?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s some advice: Burn them. Seriously. Who cares? That person made a connection with you, your company, and your brand; but none of that matters now. You don\u2019t need them. You\u2019ve got what you need and over 50% of them weren\u2019t even remotely close to what you needed \u2013 or will ever need in the future anyway. The best thing to do with people who didn\u2019t make the cut is to treat them like garbage, right?<\/p>\n
Plus, fire = toasty! (It\u2019s been cold in San Francisco recently.)<\/p>\n
Wait a second though. Don\u2019t burn them (fire code regulations could pose a problem, after all!). There are plenty of other<\/i> creative ways to cut off ties with these people, some of them much more fun and requiring a lot less effort than pulling out the gasoline. These ideas will leave a bad taste in their mouth about your employer brand probably for the rest of their life! Better yet, they\u2019ll tell all their friends about their bad experience, so you\u2019ll never have to deal with a passive pool of admiring candidates.<\/p>\n
Here are 9 easy and simple ways to burn bridges with future applicants:<\/p>\n
We hear that this one is a pet peeve and it really<\/i> annoys them! They know that it\u2019s so simple for us to set up an automatic email reply letting them know potential time frames for hearing back about a job. They also know that it would take us probably about two minutes to put together a group email to all the unsuccessful candidates to let them know they didn\u2019t make it (using bcc, of course). Knowing we couldn\u2019t be bothered to do either of these things makes them really mad, so poof goes the bridge!<\/p>\n2. Unfriendly Careers Page<\/h2>\n
You just need to warn them that you get about a hundred applicants a month wanting an unpaid internship so they don\u2019t get too excited. That\u2019s if you can bother putting a careers page up at all. After all, all the good<\/i> people are in the passive job market right? And they never<\/i> look at careers pages of companies who contact them. Keep that careers page as unfriendly and scary-looking as possible to make sure that only arrogant self-obsessed people will ever apply for any of your roles.<\/p>\n
Bonus points if your careers page is unfriendly, scary, tough to navigate, AND out of date!<\/p>\n
Why on earth would you want to talk to someone who wants to know about<\/i> your job rather than apply to work for<\/i> you? You wouldn\u2019t want to run the risk of discovering someone with transferrable skills and increasing your workplace diversity and creativity levels. Also, you won\u2019t have to deal with the headache of fielding interest from an experienced candidate willing to work junior positions to get a foot in your industry\u2019s door. Say no.<\/p>\n
Oh! Better yet, don\u2019t reply to their request. You\u2019re clearly too busy.<\/p>\n
Sometimes it\u2019s just good to see what\u2019s out there and find out who you could reel in to keep on your passive candidate file. High quality applicants particularly hate spending time filling out a resume, researching the company, taking time off their current work, and traipsing in for an interview only to discover the role isn\u2019t actually available anymore! If you do this one right, you\u2019ll never have them apply for another role with your company again. Another bridge gone!<\/p>\n
This is a great way of filtering out people who have an eye for design, appreciate great user experience, and prefer to get things done quickly. Your application system should be as unfriendly as possible. Make sure resumes realign when they get uploaded. Ask them to manually enter their job experience and university degrees even though it\u2019s all on the resume. Don\u2019t allow pdfs, and ensure that at least one link is broken in every application process. Bonus points if you can make the search function turn up vague job descriptions with tiny text \u2013 that works wonders with starting bridge fires.<\/p>\n
No one who is serious about a job search would do it on an iPad. Keeping your careers webpages desktop-only makes sure that the person on a train or in a caf\u00e9 during lunch can\u2019t apply. They\u2019ll have to do it at home, and they\u2019ll probably forget about it. Also, it\u2019ll make them frustrated with your brand for about a week as they keep realizing that they never have time to apply for your role. If you\u2019re lucky, by the end of it they\u2019ll just give up.<\/p>\n
These are best combined with a requirement to upload a cover letter. After writing the cover letter, ask the applicant to put all the same information into the question boxes. They\u2019ll realize they need to say the same thing differently. Again. Considering the amount of times they\u2019ve looked over and rewritten their resume already, this sort of requirement brings them straight to boiling point. At the very least, it will give you a reason to cut out candidates with common sense who just copy and pasted the information from cover letter to screening questions.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t really matter who the recruiter is as long as they don\u2019t know who you are or what your role is about. Get your roles into the hands of as many depressed and overworked recruiters as you can. An unknowledgeable or unenthusiastic recruiter has been known to turn off many a high performing candidate on behalf of their clients.<\/p>\n