How to Quickly Add Value to Your Candidate Rejections

How much time do you spend responding to candidates who don’t make the grade? How often do you hear from formal feedback, anecdotes and peers that this is one of the most frustrating aspects of job search for job seekers?

Rejection is an essential part of the recruitment process. How you turn down candidates says a lot about your company, rejecting candidates with kindness is part of creating a positive candidate experience. When done right, it helps you build a healthy talent pipeline and support a positive employer brand. Bad rejection practices can seriously damage your company’s reputation and your personal brand.

Candidates who have a positive experience are more likely to:

• Consider future job openings with your company/agency
• Become customers or recommend your services
• Encourage people they know to apply for future roles with your company/agency

What if there was an easy way to make your rejections more personal and more human (humane?), without sitting down and painstakingly responding to each job seeker individually. With video, there is. 

Think about the three most common reasons for not proceeding to screening at your workplace, let me help you, my guess is:

1. Candidate does not have the skills/experience you are looking for
2. Candidate does not have working rights required for the role
3. Candidate has not addressed the key selection criteria

Here's one I prepared earlier, it took me 10 minutes to write the script, a day of procrastinating to film and 10 minutes to edit.

So that’s three videos, filmed and refreshed once a year. It doesn’t matter who is in the video, what matters is that a human who represents your company is delivering the message, the message is personalized and it’s a whole lot more helpful to a job seeker than:

"I am sorry to inform you that on this occasion you have not been selected for an interview. I'm sure you understand that we receive a large number of applications and competition for the role was fierce …"

Triage your applications into three groups (segmentation) and send each group the pre-recorded thank you for your application video, either by SMS or email.

Here’s how candidates typically respond:

You can create more sophisticated messages as you get better at video and more comfortable with the medium. Start with a small, measurable project and work your way up.

You can use the call to action (CTA) in your video to invite feedback and measure the candidate experience. The CTA could be an invitation to complete your candidate experience survey, or for unsuccessful candidates to share their opinion over the phone. Don’t forget to thank candidates who take the time to provide feedback and use the feedback to improve your hiring process.

 Go forth and be helpful, you've got this!

Learn how one of Australia's oldest and most trusted businesses is transforming the candidate experience with personalized video.