{"id":7256,"date":"2015-08-17T14:50:05","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T21:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/recruitloop.wpengine.com\/?p=7256"},"modified":"2023-05-12T12:09:58","modified_gmt":"2023-05-12T19:09:58","slug":"how-you-treat-candidates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/how-you-treat-candidates\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do Candidates Really Think About How You Treat Them?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago\u00a0I attended a Talent Acquisition and Selection conference in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Having been playing in ‘the recruitment game’ for 20 years now, I was absolutely shocked when the research was presented about just how poorly nearly 100,000 candidates\u00a0had described their own recent recruitment experiences.<\/p>\n

I’ve written previously about why a poor candidate experience can be bad for business<\/a>. So it shouldn\u2019t really come as much of a surprise to anyone reading this<\/em>\u00a0post that the candidate experience is an integral part of the hiring\u00a0process that can impact just how effectively your\u00a0organisation can attract and\u00a0recruit quality talent.<\/p>\n

When did you last walk a mile in your candidates’ shoes?<\/p>\n

How would you feel if you were on the receiving end of\u00a0some of your company’s automated email responses?<\/p>\n

Worse still, how you would feel if you just never heard anything after submitting your application to a company you had your heart set on working for?<\/p>\n

More and more candidates are starting to feel disrespected and even resentful during their recruitment process.<\/p>\n

My plan is to share\u00a0many of the findings that were presented at the conference in future\u00a0posts. However I’ll be using this post to set the scene and to reinforce that whether you’re a business owner, hiring manager, or internal recruiter, it’s up to you to ensure that you treat your future potential employees with the respect they so rightly deserve.<\/p>\n

1. The application process<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Have you gone through\u00a0your own application process first hand recently? I don’t just mean\u00a0thinking about<\/em> how the process works, but actually really<\/em> going through it.<\/p>\n

Go on – create a dummy r\u00e9sume and submit it through your careers page portal and see what happens.<\/p>\n

Is the r\u00e9sume submission process even intuitive? Can you apply via a mobile device? Are you asked to spend 30 – 45 minutes responding to a series of pointless questions?<\/p>\n

What’s going through your head while you do this? Perhaps your thinking “this is 30 minutes of my life I’ll never get back<\/em>“!<\/p>\n

What about when you receive\u00a0that automated response from no-reply@[your company].com<\/span> that may as well say “Thanks for taking 30 minutes to submit your application. Actually you might never hear from us again!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

Now think for a moment about how many candidates are actually self-ejecting from the process at this point during their application. What if the best talent aren’t even completing their application, choosing instead to abandon because it’s simply all too hard?<\/p>\n

2. The selection\u00a0process<\/h2>\n

Once a candidate has ‘made the cut’, believe it or not you actually want to set them up for success.<\/p>\n

Remember: They applied because they wanted to work for your organisation. You’ve identified them amongst perhaps hundreds of applicants. So why put them off? Or worse, why scare them away?<\/p>\n

This is where common courtesy also comes into play.<\/p>\n

If a candidate has taken time out of their day to come and meet with you, then you need to spend a decent amount of time with them, even if you realise they’re not quite right.<\/p>\n

For example, say it took them 45 minutes to get to your office, and another 45 minutes to get back to work but you only spend 20 minutes with them. How do you think they will feel? What sort of message does that send? How will this translate into any feedback the candidate decides to share within their personal and social networks?<\/p>\n

We’ve written so many posts on how to conduct an interview professionally<\/a>. But one of the most common tips is simply to make the candidate feel relaxed, valued, and aware of exactly what the interview process will entail.<\/p>\n

How they are treated on the day will leave a lasting impression whether or not they ultimately get the job. Even the best candidates will self-eject and look for another opportunity elsewhere if they are not treated professionally and with respect during the selection process.<\/p>\n

3. The rejection process<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The most common complaint from candidates\u00a0is that they never hear anything after their interview.<\/p>\n

Yet getting back to unsuccessful candidates is a common courtesy that many employers and business owners don\u2019t seem to consider necessary any more.<\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019s easy to call a candidate, tell them how impressed you were with them and offer them a job with your organisation. It\u2019s not so easy to call a candidate and tell them they have been unsuccessful. However it\u2019s something you need<\/em> to do, if only to maintain your professional reputation in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty rude when you think about it. After going to all the trouble of preparing an application and then sweating through the interview process, more often than not taking time away from their current job to do so, the candidate then hears nothing more for weeks on end, until finally they are forced to conclude that they didn\u2019t get the job.<\/p>\n

If you have had any form of ‘human contact’ with a candidate, you cannot simply\u00a0send them an automated rejection email.<\/p>\n

A 3-5 minute personal phone call letting them down gently, but also providing them with feedback, is all it takes to help maintain your employer brand.<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0The communication process<\/strong><\/h2>\n

When recruiting talent for any organisation, communication has always been (and will always be) key.<\/p>\n

You need to make the candidate feel important and wanted.<\/p>\n

If your candidate is kept in the dark, or only receives automated \/ electronic messages with no human contact whatsoever during the process, what do you think they will start to believe happens inside the actual organisation? Are people kept in the dark? Are there no personal communication channels?<\/p>\n

Way back in the \u201890\u2019s<\/a>, when we couldn\u2019t create automated email sequences to respond to candidates and we actually had to pick up the phone and speak to every single one of them, we were able to quickly gauge how a candidate was feeling \u2026 and respond accordingly.<\/p>\n

Also there were no social media platforms for disgruntled\u00a0candidates to share their frustrations and blacklist your organisation with everyone they knew.\u00a0Today, in 140 characters and a push of a button, if you\u2019ve created a negative candidate experience, the world will know about it straight away and your employer brand could be tarnished.<\/p>\n

Candidates aren\u2019t mind readers. They genuinely want to be given as much information as possible at every stage of the process. And while some candidates may consider \u2018no news to be good news\u2019, others may consider \u2018no news\u2019 to mean they\u2019ve been rejected. You don\u2019t want them making the wrong assumption.<\/p>\n

Trust me \u2026 a candidate is never going to accuse you of over communicating.<\/p>\n

You\u00a0might want to consider implementing quality checks and a standard operating protocol around communication\u00a0and how you and your internal recruitment teams or hiring managers stay in contact\u00a0with candidates helping to create a more positive candidate experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How you treat candidates is an integral part of the hiring process that can impact how effectively your organisation attracts and recruits quality talent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Do Candidates Really Think About How You Treat Them?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How you treat candidates is an integral part of the hiring process that can impact how effectively your organisation attracts and recruits quality talent.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zippia.com\/employer\/how-you-treat-candidates\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Do 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