Don’t leave your candidates waiting and wondering. Automated hiring software can help you deliver a better experience.
When you’re mired in the stress of hiring, it’s easy to forget what it feels like to be on the other side of a job hunt. Interviewing is stressful, high pressure, and — worst of all — requires a lot of waiting to hear from employers.
Automated hiring software allows you to protect applicants from the stress of the job hunt while protecting your bottom line. Don’t leave job candidates waiting and wondering! If they’re good enough to interview, they’re good enough to receive a clear and timely answer from you, whether or not you’re going to actually hire them.
As a hiring manager, you’re always busy. You’re probably even busier now that you’re trying to hire someone new on your team. You have to keep up with all your normal tasks on top of managing the hiring process, so it’s understandable that you might forget to tell hopeful job-seekers that aren’t the right fit.
There’s no need to be rude just because you’re so busy. Let automated hiring help you manage every stage of the hiring process, including letting applicants down gently.
A Reminder of What it’s Like to be an Applicant
Consider the scenario: you’re a skilled job seeker who just got married or bought your first home. Through no fault of your own, you’ve found yourself without a job. You have excellent references, a first-rate education, and plenty of skills. So you’re more than a little frustrated when you find yourself trapped in a frustratingly competitive job market.
Until you think you’ve connected with an employer. You had a great interview and felt like you were a great fit. Yet you never hear back from them. You’re not sure whether you were the second-place applicant, or in 70th place. You don’t know if you did a great job, or a terrible one. At first, you can brush it off, but when it keeps happening with each employer, it’s easy to end up demoralized, insecure, and frustrated. That can influence your performance in the next interview.
The feelings of job applicants are not your responsibility, of course. Good people, however, care about not making the world a worse place for others. The applicant you decline will eventually land somewhere and may tell others about their experience applying to work with you. It’s in the best interests of everyone for them to have a positive experience with your team. Don’t leave applicants waiting and worrying any longer.
Why Hiring Managers Forget to Tell Applicants No
Life as a manager is anything but easy. If hiring is your full-time job, you’re probably onto the next candidate search as soon as you hire one candidate. If you’re a manager who spends only part of their time hiring, things get even more dicey. You have so many competing demands that letting an applicant down gently can take a backseat to just about everything else. You might even find yourself dodging calls of hopeful applicants.
Of course, that’s not the only reason hiring managers refuse to reach out to declined applicants. Job hiring is an emotional process, and even managers can find themselves emotionally invested in hiring and firing decisions. No matter how good you are at managing people, it’s still hard to tell someone no. That’s especially true when you’re taking away one option for the future. And that’s exactly what a job is—an option for a brighter future.
You don’t know the job applicant well, so you’re unsure of how they might react to being told no. Will they yell at you? Cry? React in a way that frightens you, or that forces you to spend way more time on the phone than you hoped? We live in an unpredictable job market, and applicants are equally unpredictable.
If you’re like most people, you might also struggle to find the right words, be anxious about calling, and procrastinate until it’s too late anyway. Not only does this leave job applicants waiting, it also feels bad for you. Time spent procrastinating is time taken away from tasks which could use your full, undivided attention. You and your job applicants both deserve better.
How Following Up With Applicants Helps Your Business
Some hiring managers are so accustomed to turning down applicants — and perhaps even ignoring them after they do — that they no longer feel obligated in following up after a job interview. It shields you from the emotional impact of your decisions, and helps you avoid procrastination. But it can also be a source of trouble. There are very good reasons to follow up with applicants, even if you don’t care about the personal well-being of those applicants. Those reasons include:
- Preserving goodwill toward your company. Remember that an applicant today might be a customer tomorrow. You might share clients with the business where they eventually land. Protect your company’s reputation.
- A small business world. Today you’re the one turning down an applicant. But next year, that same applicant might occupy a managerial role. You might need something from them. You want them to remember that you treated them fairly.
- Freeing up business resources. Some applicants will follow up if you don’t let them down gently. And some can become quite persistent.
- Preserving good relationships with applicants whom you might eventually want to fill another role. You don’t know if your new hire will work out just yet. If the hiring falls through, you should have the option to call upon your second choice.
Hiring automation helps because it takes you from hunting for an applicant to hiring one in just four days. That’s not the end, though. Our software can also automatically let applicants know that they didn’t quite make the cut. We automate the process, letting applicants down gently so you don’t have to. No more guilt, procrastination, or worry. We offer a seamless hiring process that makes it all so much less difficult for everyone involved.
Today’s hiring culture is more competitive than ever. With automation, you can get ahead of the competition, save time, and find the best candidates before your competitors even know those candidates are in the market. Even better, you can create a great candidate experience for everyone, even those you turn down.
