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Responding to candidates

Posted: November 9th, 2009 under Whatjobsite Online Recruitment Research.
Tags: candidate application, candidate experience

In a previous post we spoke about how important it was to manage the candidate application process and in this post we are following up with the results of a recent online survey we ran on whatjobsite. We asked our users how quickly they acknowledged candidates applications.

28% of our users said that they were very good and gave candidates an acknowledgement of receipt of their application within a day.

15% said that they responded within three days.

And another 17% said that they responded within a week.

6% said that although they didn’t get back to candidates within a week they did indeed get back to candidates… eventually.

Effectively, therefore, over 66% of recruiters said that they got back to candidates with 60% saying they did so in the first week.

But what about that other 34%? Well, sadly, these recruiters said that they never acknowledge receipt of candidate applications. They simply didn’t respond to them. This is a disappointing statistic, if unsurprising. Most evidence suggests that candidates seldom get a response. Sometimes, you have to feel sorry for the candidates.

http://www.harbour-ats.com Adam Gretton

I agree – when I used to work for exec-appointments, the main complaint we got from candidates was they would often get no response from the advertiser once they had applied. Particularly for these executive-level applicants, they felt they deserved at the very least a note to thank them for their application. I see no reason why this level of common courtesy shouldn’t apply to all levels of candidates, no matter how many you get applying.

When you’ve paid good money to attract the right attention from job seekers the last thing you want to be doing is turning them off by a poorly delivered application experience. Your Employer Brand experience shouldn’t stop when a candidate selects “job search” or hits “apply” – why not let each and every applicant know exactly what’s going on and where they are in the process?

Time.

That most precious of all resources.

No time.

So what you need (yes, of course I am pitching here is an Applicant Tracking System that includes auto-emails and other tools to enable you to do all of this quickly, easily and even automatically. HARBOUR® ATS does so much more than provide both the Candidate and the Recruiter a better user experience – but we think that’s a great place to start all the same.

It’s simple – you send templated, but still personalised, candidate emails. Some are automated (thanks for applying) and others are manual, but the key thing here is communication – staying in touch. It saves applicants’ getting hot under the collar, chasing you via telephone and/or bad-mouthing your organisation to others.

Word-of-mouth is a powerful force – ensure people only have good things to say about you!

http://www.harbour-ats.com