Jennifer McClure riffed yesterday on giving feedback to candidates. She also riffed on NOT giving feedback to candidates… If you’ve been in the recruiting and HR biz for more than a year, you’ve seen it happen. There are basically 4 types of feedback companies give candidates who take the time to apply for a job with them. Here’s my rundown to contrast with Jennifer’s:
1. No Feedback. It’s a Black Hole…
2. Digital Feedback only, the "Dear John" letter of the digital recruiting scene…
3. Verbal Feedback, but so vanilla that it’s pretty much the same as the "Dear John" letter referenced above…
4. Quality Verbal Feedback, the kind that gives candidates an idea of where they stood in the process, complete with where they need to get stronger to compete in the future against the type of candidate ultimately selected for the position.
But wait, there’s more! Sometimes the candidate pool isn’t groovy enough for the recruiter/hiring manager team in question, so they make a decision to "re-source". That means they want to flush the current set of candidates because they don’t feel like it’s strong enough. To do that, the good company gives feedback to the candidates who applied and also to the candidates who interviewed.
When re-sourcing, the feedback happens the usual way – those not interviewed or contacted get the note from system, and those who have interviewed hopefully get a phone call or a personalized note from the recruiter which says they’re being removed from consideration.
But what do you say? My unscientific research with several recruiter friends, as well as my own experience, suggests that giving feedback that re-sourcing is occurring to a candidate who has interviewed is harder than telling someone you’ve made an offer to another candidate. Why? Because, the "we’ve gone with another candidate speech" is easy for candidates to comprehend. Someone won, someone lost. Life goes on…
The re-sourcing situation? Be honest with that one, and you are saying, "we liked you enough to interview you, but rather than give you this job, we’d like to start from scratch." Ouch. That’s going to leave a mark…
As a result, lots of firms use the standard, "we’ve opted to go with a candidate who more closely fits our needs" line in both written and verbal notifications to candidates when re-sourcing. Then they hit the market with a flurry of postings/ads, etc., which of course are viewed by the candidates who just got the notification.
The result? Crappy PR for your company. Write a customized note for your ATS when resourcing is the deal. When talking to candidates you’ve interviewed, take the high road "It’s me, not you" approach, citing the fact that your hiring manager is REALLY looking for something VERY SPECIFIC. So specific, you’ll tell the candidate, that you aren’t sure you’ll close it in the next round of sourcing either.
You’ll feel better by coming clean (sort of), and the candidate will feel better as well…
And of course there’s the additional kick when you’re already down of adding something like “previous applicants need not apply” to the re-posted job. My company did that when we hired my boss because the first round of interviews were so pathetic. The last thing we wanted was to weed through the same resumes all over again.
BA -
Yeah, that’s pretty much giving a good hard kick to the previous candidates. Of course, if you give quality feedback and include the fact the job’s going back up, you wouldn’t have to deal with that right.
If you really wanted to kick them, you could add this to the posting, “Reposted due to substandard candidate pool in previous round…”
Geesh….