The Candidate experience

In the world of online job boards, automated CV submission and the click of an apply button, it’s all too easy to forget there’s a real candidate behind that CV. But for a recruiting employer it’s crucial that every candidate gets a great experience, even the ones you don’t want to interview.

These candidates are the ones that will take your reputation to their friends, family and even their work colleagues and quite possibly may just apply again when they have more experience.

We can all make ambassadors of the candidates that end up working for us, but just imagine making ambassadors of the candidates that we didn’t even interview?

The candidate experience is something you really need to be passionate about, just like we are at We Love 9am - a prompt response with tailored constructive feedback for every applying candidate. Of course, we realise we can’t offer our service to every client, especially the ones that don’t recruit Sales & Marketing people.

It’s not rocket science, but stick to these 3 tips for a great candidate experience:

Be as prompt as you can – there is nothing worse than not knowing so put the candidates out of their misery as soon as you can, they’ll appreciate it.
Contact them directly – whether it’s by email or by phone, do the decent thing and let them know they didn’t make it. Don’t just leave them hanging, it’s horrible for them and it makes you look bad.

• Be as prompt as you can – there is nothing worse than not knowing so put the candidates out of their misery as soon as you can, they’ll appreciate it.
  
• Contact them directly – whether it’s by email or by phone, do the decent thing and let them know they didn’t make it. Don’t just leave them hanging, it’s horrible for them and it makes you look bad.
  
• Try to give constructive feedback – We know it can be hard, and we know it takes some time but a standard “thanks for applying but we’re not taking your application any further” doesn’t really help anyone. You don’t have to write an essay but you could point out any obvious reasons why they didn’t make the cut – lack of experience, doesn’t have the appropriate qualifications etc