How Do Recruiters Let Candidates Down?

As recruiters, we understand the thrill of placing the right person, and letting them know that they’ve got the job. What we like a lot less, however, is letting all the other candidates know that they missed out, and why.

That’s understandable – keeping candidates informed of their application status is not only a constant task, but it’s also often an emotional one – and one where we often don’t have the answers that the disappointed candidate seeks.

Perhaps our reluctance to give proper feedback is why candidates sometimes voice their discontent with recruiters during the job-seeking process, saying that they feel either:

Forgotten: The interviews are over, yet the candidate hears nothing. They end up realising that they’ve missed out on the job simply by default- when the phone never rings.

Ignored: The candidate contacts the recruiter to find out how they went, but hears nothing. The recruiter doesn’t contact them again for future roles.

Bewildered: What went wrong? The recruiter informs the candidate they didn’t get the job, but gives no feedback.

Built up unnecessarily: This happens when candidates are contacted to join the recruiter’s database on the basis of a ‘fantastic opportunity’, but never hear anything more about it, leading the candidate to suspect that the job never existed and that it was a ploy to build the database.

As such, in our approach to ‘letting a candidate down’ with the news that they didn’t get the job, perhaps we’re sometimes ‘letting them down’ in the other sense: that is, that we are failing them in some way.

So, what can we do better?

1.  Without fail, inform the candidate of their success or failure. If you are too time-pressed for a phone call, at least take the time to send an email.

2.  Without fail, respond to each request for a decision, or let them know if the decision has not yet been made.

3.  Without fail, make an attempt at feedback with the candidates that reached interview round. If you have no feedback at all from the client, explain this to the candidate. If you have negative feedback about the candidate from the client, tactfully suggest they brush up on their interviewing skills.

4.  Without fail, make the attempt to match your new candidates with opportunities, or they will suspect they are being used to build up the database.

Every candidate on your database deserves to hear the outcome of their job application. And by informing them promptly and with all the attention you can reasonably afford to give, you will soon have a reputation as a respectful recruiter, thereby attracting strong candidates…and clients.

Until next time,

Cheryl