In the world of dating, the act of “ghosting” – deleting someone, without warning, from all of one’s online connections and never contacting them again – is even worse than breaking up by text. And when the person being ghosted has sincere hope invested in a relationship that just evaporates without a trace, it feels rude and hurtful.
The world of recruiting has a lot in common with dating, especially when they’re meeting online and one party has considerably more invested in the relationship. And right now, I’m hearing from a growing number of hiring managers, recruiters and HR teams that some of their most promising job candidates are ghosting them.
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Let’s be honest: companies have been ghosting job candidates for years without giving it a second thought. How many online applications have gone unanswered? How many hopeful applicants have been interviewed, then dismissed without a kind word from a live human being?
Hey, we’re all busy. And when we, as the ones doing the hiring, held the position of power in an employer’s market, we barely noticed when someone fell off the radar. But now the tables have turned. As we emerge from the pandemic, it’s a hot candidate market, and many employers are getting a taste of their own ghosting medicine – job candidates that had so much potential are simply not responding to you. It’s as if they’ve dropped off the face of the earth. And how rude of them not to call and let you know they’ve decided to go another way!
The whole ghosting thing doesn’t seem like a problem until it happens to you. And, over the years, just as dating breakups have shifted from talking in-person to talking over the phone to communicating by email and text, HR operations have become increasingly designed to minimize contact with people. I am guilty as charged, having developed hiring practices intentionally minimizing candidate touch-points in the name of efficiency.
Restricted budgets and limited staff resources in HR mean we don’t always have the capacity to effectively communicate with every candidate who is applying for our company’s open positions. But in a candidate’s market (and, I would argue, in any kind of market) it pays to have a good communication process in place to avoid ghosting candidates entirely. It’s about creating an effective “candidate experience,” and it’s something every hiring company needs to understand and embrace.
Why?
Some applicants are clearly not qualified for the job they’ve applied for and there is a responsibility on the candidate’s part to be realistic about their qualifications when applying to jobs. But what happens when an applicant truly becomes a candidate – when they’ve been invited into your process and you’ve connected with them – then you decide to hire someone else? For you, the job is done. But for them, being ghosted by a potential employer leaves them dangling, uncertain, uneasy. At best, it creates a sense of disappointment. And, at worst, it can create downright animosity. You risk losing that candidate forever, when there may be another, better job for them elsewhere in your company that they will never apply for.
What’s worse? Ghosted candidates complain to their friends. They do it over drinks. And they do it on social media, where their complaints and perceptions of your company can quickly spread. Now you’ve just sent a message to dozens, maybe hundreds, of other potential job applicants who won’t bother even applying to your next open position.
So, how do you re-tool from having a ghost-like hiring process to developing an appropriate and rich candidate experience?
Here are five tips to make sure your candidate experience helps you attract, engage and hire the best candidates for your job openings:
1. Treat everyone with a personal touch – make automation more personal. When an applicant is clearly not qualified for a job, you know it (and they probably know it too). But why punish someone for reaching for their dreams? Acknowledging an applicant’s effort with an automated response message is the least you can do. It gives them the benefit of the doubt. But don’t make it feel like a heartless robot is casting them aside. Create an auto-notification that kindly shows your appreciation for them, even if the ultimate message is “no, but thank you for applying.” Encourage instead of discouraging, and provide a link to helpful tips while job searching.
2. Assume every applicant has potential (whether it is with you or not) – point them in the right direction. An applicant may be swinging for the fences with the job they’ve applied for, but just because they aren’t qualified for that position doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for them somewhere else at your company. Don’t just dismiss them outright. Include in your “rejection” message a link to other job openings at your company and invite them to apply. Better yet, give their application or resume a few minutes of your time to see if they might have the qualifications you are seeking in another open position. There may not be anything right now, but there may be in the future, and at least you’ve left them feeling good about your company and the opportunities there.
3. Model the behavior you want – empower your candidates. The most successful companies strive to model a growth mindset for their employees. Why not model that for your candidates as well? If you feel your hiring culture has modeled the wrong behavior in the past (i.e. ghosting) then think about how you can better represent your own desire for continuous improvement. Make your hiring process clear from the outset. Let applicants know what you expect from them and the steps in the hiring process (and stick to it). And, better yet, create a portal where candidates are empowered to proactively log in and see the status of their application. If they’re qualified, set them up with a recruiter for a pre-screen. And if they are not qualified or not selected for a position, set it up to serve them with other job openings that may better suit their experience, provide links to education and training resources that would help them become qualified for the positions you have open or give them an opportunity to enter their skills and career desires in a database. You can automate this. It’s a light touch on your part, but it can still be very effective.
4. Go old school with your best candidates – talk. When you’ve decided that a candidate is qualified, but not quite right for the position (or you’ve selected someone else), give them the dignity of a personal response with a phone call. How quaint, you might think. But they are valuable candidates with whom you have already invested time, and you are dashing their hopes. “Breaking up” by email or text can feel heartless. Go the extra mile and call them. Yes, it can be hard to tell someone “no” in person, but that’s why we have expert recruiting professionals. Your candidates will be shocked and impressed, and it will help you stand out above all the other companies in the hiring market. If you don’t know how to do this, there is training available to learn how to say “no” with dignity.
5. How do you make it work when you have limited resources? Think Apollo 13. In the movie, they show how they were in trouble and they needed to fix the situation with what they had at their disposal on the ship. They threw everything on a desktop and found a workable solution. HR is not as different from a moonshot as one might think. When resources are constrained, it requires some creative thinking. Can you reassign staff during hiring spikes to retain the personal touch? Can you bring in a contract recruiter part time just to handle the candidate experience? Can you set up a chat service with your HR people to answer candidates’ questions? If not, consider how you might outsource some of that work – just what you need and nothing more – to expert HR professionals with a help desk service that provides on-demand HR help desk and communication services for candidate and employee engagement. It frees up your HR team to focus on what’s most mission-critical and ensures that your candidate experience still has the human touch.
In the end, one thing is clear. If we want to improve candidate behavior we have to model that behavior. We need to stop ghosting and start engaging. Human beings need to feel appreciated. When possible, they need to hear from real people. And your investment now in candidate engagement will pay off both short and long term. You’ll begin building a reputation as a company people want to work for. You’ll attract and hire better candidates (and their positive word-of-mouth will bring you more). And you’ll start building loyalty, even among candidates you don’t hire, so you’ll have a referral network and potential candidates waiting in the wings just in time to fill your new job openings.