Many of us only hear about the interviews, offers and hires when it comes to recruiting, but more candidates are rejected than offered.
For every 1 hire, 46 people were reviewed, 12 were phone/video screened, 3-5 were interviewed, and in the end, one person is ultimately hired (stats from an actual CFO role I worked on).
What’s the only action that will screw up your recruiting efforts? A lack of feedback in two areas of the recruiting process:
- Slow or little feedback from the hiring manager to the recruiter about the candidates they submit.
- Little or no feedback from the recruiter to the candidate about why they were not selected for the job.
I was asked by LinkedIn a month ago to help create a guide to giving feedback. You should pay attention to how you give feedback because your candidates are people who have real desires and career goals they want to progress towards. Plus, they might be a fit for something else down the road.
Recruiting does not need to be difficult, but it can become difficult when the hiring manager does not work with the recruiter to give feedback. It gets even worse when the recruiter does not give feedback to the candidate.
Lack of feedback is not usually because the hiring manager is lazy–it’s because they are busy. It’s the recruiter’s job to fix this.
Get in front of the hiring manager.
The other day, I mailed the hiring manager a gift with a note to get their attention (big surprise–the gift was Sumato Coffee beans), but I had to get direct because they were busy with big executive changes and I needed to get back on their radar.
I have stopped working with clients who can’t get back to me in 3 days or less with feedback. My expectations are 24 hours or less. Beyond that, we start to have issues, lose candidates, and nothing happens.
I have a couple of clients who get it. They give same day feedback and guess what? They get who they want and hire people fast. Simple but not easy.
Recruiting is about making things happen. If you are not getting feedback, work harder to make the feedback happen.
Ben Martinez – family guy, coffee critic, planker, and HR & Recruiting journeyman. He has successfully worked in HR leadership roles around the US and Mexico for Fortune 500 companies (Pepsi, Honeywell, and Energizer). Most recently he was the VP of People & Culture for HireVue, where he hired 400+ people in almost five years using video, social media, and created the employment brand, VueNation in partnership with HireVue.
Ben now runs his own consulting company, Ramp Talent, where they ramp recruiting and HR for startups. From recruiting ready-to-go talent to implementing ongoing best practices to preventing legal headaches, we build the first HR and recruiting systems for fast-growing startups.
PS – coffee is for closers – Ben founded an e-commerce subscription coffee company focused on re-imagining coffee in the workplace and home – Sumato Coffee Co. They only roast your beans within 48 hours of your order.
Ben lives in the SLC, Utah area.