Viewing All Posts Tagged ‘black hole’
Business Wisdom for the Recruiting Department
An article in today’s USA Today spoke to the lengths that retailers (specifically electronics companies) are going to to “keep customers”.
”now is when I most want to keep my customers, because it’s much harder to get new ones”.
Is anyone taking this stance for candidates? Probably not. It seems that in our world of too many job seekers for too few jobs, we are more than willing to treat our candidates as if they are in infinite supply.
But this is a dangerous mistake. The candidate who applies for a role at your company today may turn out to be a customer or even worse, someone you desperately need to hire in 2010. How you treat them today WILL dictate how the perceive your company in every interaction in the future.
I’m not advocating sending fruit baskets to everyone who takes the time to apply to one of your open positions (chances are they applied for the wrong job for a myriad of reasons) but at the very least, you need to close the “black hole” and communicate with everyone, both thanking them for applying AND letting them know the final disposition of their application.
You can do it, your ATS can automate it for you. You just have to realize that it’s not a burden to do it. It IS the right thing to do and it’s just common business sense.
Paying it Forward
It is good to see that in this tough economy, people have not lost their ability to sympathize with those who are conducting a job search. Great post by Kelly Dingee on Fistful of Talent on this subject.
That said, I am amazed at how many recruiting departments are OK with continuing to let candidates sit in the “black hole” of recruitment. This “black hole” is created by not communicating with candidates outside of the original “we got your application” email that is sent by the ATS. I estimate that anywhere from 50% – 85% of the candidates that apply each year to Corporate America hear NOTHING after this acknowledgment!
Now back to “paying it forward”. Recruiters don’t want to deliver the “no thank you” message for fear that they will be inundated with calls from candidates asking “why not?”. These are long held beliefs that seem to be driving business process decisions even though it is unfounded. I know of several F100 companies who communicate with ALL candidates after the initial aknowledgement and close the loop with 100% of the applicants – WITHOUT this imaginary call volume. They simply give the candidate information that they are longing to have AND are offering them help in continuing their job search.
Pay it forward is as simple as choosing to communicate with your candidates and giving them information about their application. Really, it is very simple.
Frustrated Job Seekers
Completing the concept that a fragmented internet recruiting world is ruining online recruiting, here is an article that touches on the job seeker frustration. In it, Jennifer Hamm mentions some of the frustrations:
