5 Ways to Gently let Candidates Down

 When you are under the gun trying to hire staff in a very tight candidate market, with your time-to-hire, cost-to-hire and turnover all going in the wrong direction, that is ‘North’, it can be hard to see the importance of providing a fluffy, dream candidate experience. Your focus is on hard factors such as: placing ads, renewing ads, scheduling interviews, negotiating and getting real bums on seats—generally being task orientated.

But, research is telling us that you can’t easily separate the hard and the soft side of recruitment. If you just focus on hard hiring metrics without focusing on the quality of the candidate experience your overall hard recruitment metrics are likely to suffer. We recently featured surveys from CareerBuilder and MysteryApplicant, which showed that between 25 -40 percent of candidates were reporting bad experiences during the hiring process. It also showed that the majority of candidates who had these bad experiences would tell their friends and family, share this experience on social networks and be far less inclined to apply to your company and/or refer you to their friends. In fact, 22 percent would actively tell their friends not to work there. We know that in this social media era, reputations are born and die on social networks and that people are more inclined to listen to their friends views about a brand as much as the brand’s controlled marketing message. This is why it is vital that employers nurture their employer brand in the hiring process.

Unfortunately, one area where employers seem to be repeatedly failing to manage the candidate experience is in “informing candidates about the decision after the interview,” with 60 percent of applicants saying this was the main indicator of a bad candidate experience. This is why it is crucial that all companies master the art of letting candidates down gently, as done well, it will have a disproportionately large positive impact on your candidate experience.

And below I have outlined a 5-point, individualized approach to letting the candidate gently down.

1. Acknowledgment e-mail to set candidates expectations

The process of letting a candidate down gently starts at the beginning and this is the point where you should set the candidate’s expectations correctly to minimize frustration arising from misunderstandings.

Therefore, all candidates that apply should receive an immediate email acknowledgement. This can be easily arranged by your technical team using an auto-responder or it will be a built-in function of an ATS. This is common courtesy and creates a good first impression.

Try and set the candidate’s expectations correctly in the acknowledgment email, so they know when interviews are likely to occur and when they are likely to hear if they have been short-listed, plus any other nuances you may have in your communication process. For example, some companies include a “sunset clause” meaning that if candidates don’t hear by a certain date they should consider themselves unsuccessful. This is not my preferred approach, but can be helpful if you have a lot of applicants and limited resources.

2. Don’t leave them hanging

As soon as you have made your hiring decisions, don’t leave the candidates hanging. Candidates prefer a prompt decision after interview; so, following the interview, give them a time scale when they will hear from you, stick to it and notify them of any delays. If a candidate is a second or third choice, pending offer refusal from your first candidate, be honest with him/her by calling to tell him/her personally what the situation is, but praising and thanking the candidate for his/her interview efforts. Don’t be tempted to leave reserve candidates hanging on unnecessarily long.

3. Call second-round interviewees for rejections

As mentioned above, try and personally call all second-round interview candidates to notify them that they have been unsuccessful. This more personal and individual style of contact will show them they are not just a number, but that you valued them as candidates and will create a good impression. Thank them, praise them and try and give them constructive feedback on how they can make themselves more employable in this role in the future. This approach will be greatly valued. Make sure to follow up in writing and offer them the chance for more feedback, and possibly say you will notify them of any other suitable opportunities, if you can do this reliably.

4. Specific rejection message to first-round interviewees

It may not be possible or cost efficient to personally email all first-round interviewees or even adopt such an individualized approach. So, in this instance, try and deliver an attentive e-mail message for first-round interviewees, which thanks them for their time, invites them to apply again for future roles, invites them to connect on LinkedIn (possibly), and gives them the opportunity to request feedback. As a nice touch, why not develop an interview tool-kit and include a link to this in rejection letter as this will send a nurturing message. Make sure to provide feedback if requested.

5. Candidates who didn’t make it to interview

In this case, it will be appropriate to send them a generic e-mail as a minimum. Once again, thank them for applying, invite them to apply for future positions, wish them well, and why not develop a job seeker tool kit and link to this in the letter too.

Good luck in creating your dream candidate experience.