Recruiting in our current market is hard work. Every day I hear from employers that they are struggling to find the talent they need to deliver their products or services. Many business owners are telling me they have the work but they can’t get the right people to do the job. With low unemployment, industry skills shortages, and employability – soft skills shortages it’s no wonder recruitment is hard work. Recruiting in a candidate short market can be costly; from the time taken to try and recruit, the distraction of being pulled away from what you should be doing to the cost of not being able to take on work due to lack of resourcing.
In a candidate short market (you really should be considering this all the time) it’s more important than ever to look at your recruitment process and how you are engaging talent. Where I think a lot of businesses go wrong is that their recruitment process is designed with them, then business in mind. The recruitment process is all about what suits the hiring manager.
Instead our recruitment process should be designed to create a positive experience and you know you have done this well when your unsuccessful candidates are your brand advocates. Our recruitment process should be designed for the unsuccessful candidate.
Is your recruitment process designed for you or the unsuccessful candidate? Here’s how to tell:
You discourage communication
You have no contact details on your job advert as you don’t want people calling and enquiring about the vacancy – that would take up too much of your time. You simply want interested candidates to do all the hard work; write a covering letter, maybe a key selection criteria and a resume and submit it by a certain date. You then include on your advert that due to the large volume of applications you are expecting that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. Your key message to candidates is I am too busy to deal with you unless you are the candidate I am looking for.
Your timeline blows out
Maybe you didn’t have a timeline to start with but now it has been weeks and weeks since you advertised and interviewed and after the interviews you won some more contracts which meant those candidates you interviewed haven’t heard from you and have been left hanging. They’ve invested time in putting together an application and have taken time off work to come and meet with you for an interview and now they are becoming disengaged because no one has got back to them. It’s now been several weeks, or even months and you assume the candidates that you weren’t really interested in have gone on to get other jobs anyway, so you never follow up. Basically, you ghost them. This is when those candidates left hanging start to tell people they know about their poor experience and how they were treated which in turn starts to damage your business brand.
No feedback
Writing an application, doing research, attending interviews, having referees contacted, sitting assessments all takes time and effort from the candidate. They are jumping through hoops and engaged in the process and then they simply receive a sorry you have been unsuccessful email or phone call. No explanation, no feedback just a thanks but no thanks and good luck. Genuine feedback is key to the unsuccessful candidate experience. While often they may not like or agree with what they hear at least they have something to take away from the experience to help them improve for next time.
Lack of feedback and not hearing anything following an application are the two biggest complaints that I hear from job seekers. Is your recruitment process designed to alleviate these frustrations or have you designed the recruitment process with you in mind instead of your customer – the candidate?
