3 tips for excellent communication with candidates

Duong Doan is a skillful blogger and we wanted to share one of her best blog posts with you. She is originally from Vietnam, now studying in Finland and she loves writing. Human Resources is one of her favorite topics and as she has recent experiences as a job seeker, she has great tips to give to the recruiters.

What a better way to improve your recruitment process than to start by listening the opinions of your target group – the candidates? As a job seeker, I do get mad sometimes at the companies who have held back my application for years.

There are some minor tips that recruiters really should take into account in order to take their employer brand to the next level.

1. Confirmation emails upon application receipt

It only takes you some seconds to send a confirmation to the applicants that you have received his/her application. This will tranquilize the applicants that their applications have reached desired destination, rather than ending up at no-where.  Later on, this would save time as well when you would not receive several calls per day from the applicant, asking whether you have received their CVs or not. If possible, state estimated time that applicants would hear back from you.

2. Inform, when someone is not selected

This is a very common mistake and recruiters may not know how irritating it is to wait endlessly for a job that you’d never get. Please, do a favor: reply to applicants to tell them that they are not chosen, even though it is not a nice thing to say. And please, do that in a appropriate period of time. Do not keep the application waiting for months. Some recruiters may defense that there are a huge amount of applications to deal with, and they do not have time to reply one-by-one. Then, contact your IT support. 6 years ago when I was working in a head-hunter, I started to use bulk email service, where you are capable to send thousands of emails in a click.

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Some other recruiters may say when deadline is approaching and they have not found the right person that they cannot yet close the vacancy and send rejection emails. Admittedly, 90% of you would never choose the person once you have already passed him/her in the very beginning. So, inform them, maybe after 2 weeks, that they are not a suitable person you are looking for right now. Then, they can move on. Silent game is not working in this situation.

3. Detach your job description from job sites when the vacancy is fulfilled

Do not let them stay there forever. Even though the job site usually has an option for you when to hide your job ad after a defined expiry date, some recruiters are not looking at this function at all. When an applicant sees an available job ad, he/she will feel motivated and jump into action, creating a polished CV and cover letter, which later on will be rejected because the position has been filled! This creates an unprofessional image of the company and more seriously, you might have just lost a potential talent for your company. Receiving and replying to application for a filled position is a waste of time as well. Build a good data of where you post your job ad and keep a close look at them. Once a position is filled, take off all relevant job ads out of job sites.

If you have noticed, each of the above actions do not take you more than 5 minutes to complete and basically cost you almost nothing. Spending some more minutes just before lunch time on these will bring an exceptional outcome to your employer brand. Job-seekers would have a feeling that you respect their time and career path!