IS A POSITIVE CANDIDATE EXPERIENCE REALLY THAT IMPORTANT??

It's the question recruiters all over the world ask themselves every day.

Over the last few weeks and months, all I seem to keep seeing on LinkedIn are updates from people bemoaning the poor service and behaviour of recruiters. This isn’t just reserved for agency consultants, it’s also targeted towards in house recruiters as well so I decided to take part in a bit of an experiment. 

I was made redundant from my last role which put me in a unique situation. Prior to this, every move I had made in my career was on my terms – I moved when I wanted to move and have been fortunate enough to not have NEEDED to find a job. Entering the job market as someone who needed to find a job meant that I viewed the whole landscape completely differently. I cared more about candidate experience than ever before because I needed to move quickly to secure a role so that I could continue to support and provide for my family. I wanted things to move quickly, I wanted to know what was happening and I wanted to know NOW!

The worst part about the whole experience was the not knowing, the times I didn’t have a clue what was happening…I’d wake up in the morning checking my email, checking my phone hoping to see an email inviting me to interview or jumping out of my seat every time my phone rang (usually only to be told I’d had a car accident recently which I didn’t even know about!) hoping it would be the call I'd been waiting for. 

Now I’m a realist – having working in recruitment for over 10 year across both agency and in-house, I know the challenges we face every day and I know how long a recruitment process can be but even knowing what I know couldn’t have prepared me for how disappointing this period was for me. 

I always try to take positives from every situation so I decided to use this opportunity to keep a record of my applications, responses and outcomes to try and get a real understanding of what candidate experience was really like and if all of the ‘recruiter bashing’ on LinkedIn was justified. My intention was to apply for a large number of both temporary and permanent roles to both give me the best chance of securing a role but also to give me a good sample. Throughout, to maintain my integrity, I made sure I adhered to four clear rules:

1. The role and the company had to interest me

2. I only applied to roles where my experience closely matched the brief

3. The location had to be viable 

4. The salary level had to be at the right level (ie I couldn’t just apply for a job paying 3 times what I’m looking for!)

Over the course of the next few weeks, I applied for 30+ jobs with varying degrees of success and response. This may sound like a lot of roles to apply for but as I mentioned earlier, I would’ve been happy doing any of these roles and needed to find a suitable role - it certainly wasn't a 'spray and pray' approach I see so often.

There was a good mix of agency advertised roles and direct to business roles across a range of business sizes from SME up to FTSE100. On top of this (not included in the stats) it’s also worth pointing out that I called two agencies when the consultant I needed to speak to wasn’t available. I left my number and a brief overview of my experience never to hear from them again! But that's by the by, I’m not in the habit of naming and shaming so I will keep this generic and stick to numbers…it doesn’t make for positive reading.

 A caveat to these stats would be that the most recent role I applied for was the 18th April but even so...6-12 weeks since applying and 72% haven't offered any kind of response. That's over 20 businesses who haven't even bothered to let me know I haven't been successful.

Am I being unreasonable to expect a response in that time? If so, tell me although if this is acceptable to a lot of people it explains why we have such a poor reputation! In my experience, I tend to decline candidates within 2-4 weeks of receiving an application and even that feels like a long time as I'm sure none of us waits over 4 weeks once a role is live before screening CVs!

CONCLUSION

1. Every candidate wants (and deserves) to know the outcome of their application no matter what it might be – it’s closure for people and allows them to move on. If I’ve been declined, I can take it, just tell me! If you don’t tell me, I’ll simply feel anger towards your brand and stats clearly show that a poor experience is shared with at least 5 people. If you have 50 applications for a role – that’s 250 people who form a negative impression of your brand for the sake of 2 minutes sending an email. Multiply this across the hundreds of roles recruited every year in your organisation and all of a sudden you’re potentially faced with a huge problem. This is evidenced by the amount of negative comments about recruiters on Linkedin vs positive! 

2. Please be honest with candidates (as much as I hate to generalise, this is probably aimed more towards agency consultants). If you don’t think you can help me, or don’t have the time to talk to me, tell me upfront and I’ll go somewhere else, I’m not arrogant enough to assume that I have the best profile in the world and will walk straight into any job you have available! Don’t promise me you’ll call me back or that you have roles which could be suitable and then disappear forever, it's infuriating - hell hath no fury like an in house Recruitment Manager scorned!! 

This is a heartfelt request to all of my fellow recruiters whether it be agency or in house. I know we’re all incredibly busy and can be guilty of letting things slip but firing off an email to declined candidates via a system is not a task that is massively time consuming. We all need to remember that candidates are potential customers or clients (not to mention human beings!) or that you might need them to help you at some point.

I know I’ve been guilty myself of not responding to all candidates in the past on occasion but now I’ve seen first-hand how soul destroying it is hearing NOTHING, I will always communicate with every candidate who applies for one of my jobs even if it’s simply bulk declining with a standard email - at least they can have the closure they want and need. 

I don’t want you to think I’m targeting this at all recruiters because I’m not. As I mentioned earlier, this was a personal test of candidate experience and as such is limited to recruitment roles. I’m well aware I’ve only sampled a small selection of businesses and it may well be different for others but my experiences coupled with the constant assault on the resourcing profession on Linkedin provides clear evidence in my eyes that ‘we’ as a collective, could be better.

If we can be better, maybe, just maybe, we'll start to see more positivity on our LinkedIn feeds. I for one will be making sure moving forward that I work hard to deliver the best candidate experience I possibly can – it really is important.