The candidate response that nearly made me cry

The candidate response that nearly made me cry

A while back, I was sitting opposite a recruiter in Auckland, New Zealand.

She had just called a candidate in response to her application.

The candidate burst into tears.

“I have applied for hundreds of jobs, and you are the first one to respond!”

It almost had me in tears!

All recruiters, corporate and agency, need to understand the impact on lives we can have, and the need to respond to candidates in a timely and human way.

I posted this note on LinkedIn, and some oaf chimed in that my message was ‘a given’.

Well, it’s clearly not a ‘given’ if hundreds of employers did not get back to this candidate, and millions of candidates across the world express the same frustration with our business model.

It might be obvious that it needs to happen. But it does not happen. It’s a gaping hole in the recruitment eco-system.

And actually I don’t really lay all the blame at the feet of recruiters themselves. I am convinced no recruiter comes into work saying, ‘Now, how can I piss-off my candidates today?’. Of course not.

It’s the multi-listed job order fiasco, combined with dysfunctional candidate acquisition tactics that drives this ugly side of our industry.

Recruiters are so busy chasing at shadows and doing work they don’t get paid for, that they can’t get to much of the important stuff, like this.

We must all work harder to get it right.

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  • Posted by Greg Savage
  • On September 12, 2017
  • 17 Comments
Tags: candidate, candidate care, candidate management, candidates, recruitment, recruitment skills

17 Comments

John
Well said Greg! You did not mention the disgraceful comment on adverts "Due to the volume of anticipated applications only those successful at gaining an interview will be contacted". How insulting to the candidate who spends their time drafting a cover letter to go with their CV only to be greeted with ... nothing.
Moray Robertson
Excellent points Greg, I have another heart breaking experience concerning ageism. Although of course Agesim is illegal, recruiters both commercial and in-house bear the responsibility of discriminating between good and not so good candidates, and hide behind what they consider would be their client's preferences. Very few recruiters have the courage to challenge (I have successfully used the "if you needed urgent surgery, who would you prefer to operate, a seasoned Surgeon, or someone not so experienced" with my clients). We have a government who has put up the age of retirement, yet has done nothing to address this, apart from offer $10000 to an employer to hire an older worker for training purposes, which is not proving to be popular with employers. We babyboomers with significant STEM talents in IT out of work, we have 457's in IT by the bucket load, and as a result, we never see roles for trainee programmers, and yes, it is heartbreaking to see an over 45 IT worker lose their house because they couldn't get an interview - So I would ask you to review this, and use your influence on recruiters to challenge age discrimination, especially those corporate HR directors who make such a huge song and dance about how their organisations have adopted non-discrimintory policies....bottom line is...there is MUCH more to discrimination than they seem to think! Best regards Moray Robertson Expert Resources Pty Ltd 0418 281 348
Moray Robertson
Woops, here is the corrected version: Excellent points Greg, I have another heart breaking experience concerning ageism. Although of course Agesim is illegal, recruiters both commercial and in-house bear the responsibility of discriminating between good and not so good candidates, and hide behind what they consider would be their client's preferences. Very few recruiters have the courage to challenge (I have successfully used the "if you needed urgent surgery, who would you prefer to operate, a seasoned Surgeon, or someone not so experienced" with my clients). We have a government who has put up the age of retirement, yet has done nothing to address this, apart from offer $10000 to an employer to hire an older worker for training purposes, which is not proving to be popular with employers. We have babyboomers with significant STEM talents in IT who are out of work, we have overseas sourced 457's by the bucket load, and as a result, employers haven't been training graduates or hiring mature age IT professionals, and yes, it is heartbreaking to see an over 45 IT worker lose his/her house because they couldn't get an interview - So I would ask you to review this, and use your influence on recruiters to challenge age discrimination, especially those corporate HR directors who make such a huge song and dance about how deeply their organisations have adopted non-discrimintory policies....bottom line is...there is MUCH more to discrimination than they seem to think!
Chris Sale
It is sickening. Every single candidate who applies to my firm gets an auto-acknowledgement and then ALSO a formal reply sent by a real person. No it's not personalised apart from their name i.e. Dear John but it's a real email in response to their application and we employ someone to send them. BUT employers are a) just as bad as agencies in their treatment of applicants b)they inadvertently collude with agencies in the latter's malpractice: when was the last time you were asked by an employer about how you treat your candidates? Unfortunately our care is not a differentiation with the people that pay our bills.
    Craig Bromfield
    @Chris Sale, I agree with you fully as well. I'd add though that there are two other really important factors involved in the frustration that is undoubtedly building. 1) I think the job boards and the way they advertise falsely encourages candidates to apply for roles they're not qualified for. You only have to watch the Reed ads to see them telling anyone who wakes up on a Monday and wants to become a rocket scientist can, with just the click of a button. It's so far away from the truth, it's not even funny and that's speaking as someone who worked for one of the globes leading job boards in Monster. It must drive HR mad to have to go through irrelevant CV's, yet a large majority of recruiters are encouraged to measure the success of an ad by the number of applies. 2) I think there is a major misunderstanding of the role us external consultants play in the hiring process. I don't think there is enough transparency around the fact that when we're successful in making placements, we're filling roles with the exact fit, 90% minimum. We can't get our clients to hire people who don't have exactly the skills they are looking for. At least we can't if we expect to charge a fee for them. We need to be honest with the candidate base up front, tell them the truth, we typically contact around 30 candidates per search, from those 30 we're looking for 5-6 real quality possibilities so that we can present a strong 3 to our clients, so they can choose 1. That's 29 candidates we've got to reject. Only one will typically get the job. We've got to be clearer about that, we've got to be clearer about the fact we can only present what our clients want us to present. If HR are going to take a chance on a candidate that doesn't fit, they're going to do it with their own hires, they're not going to pay us 7.5k for that kind of candidate. I think too many candidates think we can magic up a role. That's two major issues aside from any need to improve all aspects of giving feedback after interviews.
      Chris Sale
      Hi Craig. Really appreciate your thoughtful points which are of course spot on. Definitely job boards make it too easy for wholly unqualified people to apply but of course they also make it easy for the perfect candidate to do so! We have ANOTHER response to candidates that politely tells them they are best in many cases using their network or applying direct as people pay us only for finding round pegs for round holes!Chris
steve shacklock
Good post,Greg and great comment from Moray.
Matthew Harvey
I totally agree Greg and I have always taken the time to reply to any candidate who is close to the description of the role if not an ideal fit. However if for example, a labourer applies for a CFO or Developer role I don't really feel the need to respond. Also being in Dubai now for the last 3 years we get extremely high volumes (much more so than the UK or Australasia (I've worked both regions)) of applicants to roles from all over the world and recently I've had to make the regrettable decision that it's not a good use of my time to reply to all of them. If I had more manpower I would make sure everyone got a response. We actually don't use job ads that much anymore as result and prefer the direct approach.
alex babic
Love it Greg. As usual.
Tracy
My policy was always to thank each one who responded and let them know they were not a good fit. And you are right, often times I would get a thank you to at least responding. I've been on that side of the fence and understand the frustration. However, I'm finding now days, it's a different search out there. I can't tell you how many candidates have responded "I don't know what I apply to I just click a button to apply to ALL". So no longer do people carefully draft cover letters like I used to. No longer do people read the ads the recruiters have created so that people understand the job, the details, the expectations and the requirements. No longer do candidates take care in looking for a job that fits them. It's a lazy man's CLICK TO APPLY TO ALL and if their resume goes to 50 recruiters who take the time to read their resume that has absolutely no relevance to the job, it's no skin off their back.
    Chris Sale
    It's undoubtedly the case that there's a race to the bottom. Candidates get more frustrated by recruiters and send out CVs without bothering to read the ad requirements and therefore recruiters don't bother to respond. And of course there is laziness on both sides too. I think it's dangerous to make judgements though: either all candidates get responses or none do! Otherwise you're actually spending more time deciding whether the candidate is 'worthy' of a reply: if you apply logic to it's conclusion ANYONE who doesn't meet the specified job requirements shouldn't get one because they've wasted the recruiter's time!
Jeff
I was made redundant earlier this year and can connect with article. I was out for 4 months before "getting back on the horse". It was really good to hear back from recruiters after putting in the effort to apply, building relationships with HR people was hard struggle but it paid off in the end. I cringed though reading some adverts. Like this one, Mechanical Engineer.... must have an Electrical Engineering degree.... hum! We call those guys Electrical Engineers. Another common one was the "Graduate Engineer" with +10yrs experience... I worry a lot about Graduate Engineers who haven't shook off the grad tag after 5yrs, but 10yrs only tells me the recruiter wants a bench warmer who does know his job and will be a litigation risk for the company... best avoid that company!!! Another was the Engineering Manager with minimum Engineering Diploma... not even a degree and he would be heading Engineering in a company, would want a surgeon operating on you with only first aid certificate, c'mon that's nuts! Time for some recruiters (and managers) to be realistic about their requirements.
Jen Dewar
Oh man, I've been that candidate. It's so frustrating to spend hours researching the company, and crafting a custom resume and cover letter, only to never hear back. I just wrote up Stacy Zapar's life hacks for recruiters last week, and she had a very easy tip: before closing out a job in your ATS, make sure all of your candidates have been notified that the role has been filled (https://www.lever.co/blog/12-recruiting-life-hacks-from-stacy-donovan-zapar). She likes to thank them for applying, offer to connect with them on LinkedIn, and provide some job search resources. This is so easy to do, whether you have an ATS or an Excel spreadsheet, and ensures that candidates maintain a positive impression of your company. You never know, you may want to hire them in the future...
    Greg Savage
    Excellent tip from Stacy..thanks for highlighting that Jen
Craig Bromfield
Greg, I don't know you but I've built up a huge respect over the years down to your posts and obvious love for the industry, as well as your undoubtedly strong reputation. I've got to be honest and say I thought one of your articles yesterday was a bit "Jerry Maguire" but this one you've absolutely smashed out of the park. Brilliant. Pure class. I've been on both sides of the fence and I must say the standards are shocking. Unless this part of our role becomes a given (quoting the guy who replied to you earlier) then we're not worth a jot. It's callous as well as unprofessional, unfortunately I've seen way too many instances where it has been acceptable to skip one of the most vital parts of the whole process. I admire your passion Greg and I've got nothing but respect for your views on how things should be done. Well played sir.
My Recruitment Plus
A very great point you've raised here Greg! Candidates often spend hours drafting & submitting a resume and cover letter only to feel as if it's been lost somewhere in space! An acknowledgment of application email should be given at the least.

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