After clicking submit on a job application, more than half of applicants sit and wait like abandoned lovers waiting for the phone to ring. Many companies seem to have adopted the foolish practice of "ghosting" when it comes to dealing with job applicants.
What's ghosting you ask? Ghosting is a newly popular term for the practice of disappearing from a relationship and ignoring texts, phone calls and other attempts at making contact. The New York Timesrecently highlighted ghosting in personal relationships, but the phenomenon is happening in professional ones, too.
What's unique about ghosting in recruiting is that many employers are vanishing from the process even before they've met a candidate! Ex-lover's might get away with such antics, but employers will live to regret it.
The candidate experience has gotten so frustrating that many potential employees refer to the online job search as a "black hole," where they submit resumes and applications, never to be seen or heard from again.
When skills are in short supply and positions are increasingly difficult to fill, ghosting in recruiting is, simply put, insane.
Knock, Knock. Anyone Home?
How out of touch are employers? Typically companies blitz customers with discounts and incentives to lure them in. But imagine a business that engages customers like they do candidates: When the customers show up, the business goes dark and employees duck behind the counters.
That scenario might sound far-fetched, but it mirrors the job-seeker experience: 82 percent of employers think that a bad candidate experience has little or no effect on the company, according to a recent Careerbuilder survey. Subsequently, a majority of employers respond to less than half of the candidates who apply.
On the other side, 84 percent of candidates expect a personal email response, and more than half anticipate a phone call. Thanking a potential employee for taking the time to apply for job at your company is a small courtesy. But what many get is a brush-off akin to last night's date sitting by the phone, waiting for the call that never comes.
Like the neglected lover, candidates remember when companies don't respond or keep in touch with them: the same articles shows 58 percent are less likely to buy from a company if they don't get a response and 69 percent shun the company after a bad interview experience.
In a world where disappointed candidates can send their plight viral with a few keystrokes and the click of a button, it's time for employers to stop mimicking the three wise monkeys who don't see, don't hear and don't listen. Here, three solutions to the recruiting "ghosting" phenomenon:
First Impressions Count
The first interaction with a candidate must be interesting, inviting and interactive. Yet a recent study by Dr. John Sullivan and Associates revealed that more than 90 percent of candidates who reach a company career site do not apply! That's a staggering statistic, and one that would not be tolerated in any other function of business. Boring and transactional career pages are a recruitment killer.
Solution: Employment branding is more than a buzzword. It begins with HR giving at least as much attention to the design, content and marketing of talent acquisition as it does to its customer acquisition strategy.
Recruiting Is Sales
When it comes to recruiting, top candidates are probably interviewing with, if not already working for, your competitors. It's a recruiter's job to entice them to apply and then quickly engage them in an experience they don't want to relinquish. That places the keys to a positive candidate experience squarely in the hands of communication.
Solution: From first contact to the job offer (or no offer), the candidate should never be asking or thinking, "What's next?" Develop a process for every possible touch point with a candidate and send updates, whether it's an email, phone call or thank you note. To accomplish this, some of the process must be automated—but don't replace the personal call or email with full automation.
Recruiting Doesn't End With the Job Offer
New employees decide to stay or leave within the first three weeks, according to a study by the Wyndhurst Group. In fact, 22 percent of staff turnover occurs in the first 45 days of employment. But if employees participate in a structured onboarding process, they're 58 percent more likely to be with the organization after three years, according to the study.
Solution: Continual communication means continual—a recruiter's responsibility does not end when an employee signs the job offer and shows up for work on the first day. Onboarding is as much a part of recruitment as prospecting for applicants.
Ghosting is bad for candidates and employers, whereas a positive, responsive candidate experience not only fills open positions, but also benefits the bottom line: 77 percent of employees are willing to accept a salary that is 5 percent lower than their expected offer if the employer created a great impression through the hiring process.
At a time when industry leaders and managers clamor for more qualified skilled workers, it doesn't pay for companies to be invisible and ignore job seekers. Candidates expect more. And they deserve better.
Photo: Shutterstock
Related Resources
Want to keep learning? Explore our products, customer stories, and the latest industry insights.
Blog Post
Steering towards agility: How organisations navigate change
The change in the world of work has recently brought with it a number of challenges. Innovations such as artificial intelligence are creating faster, completely new cycles of talent development, and this transformation sometimes creates completely new structures and hierarchies within the workforce.
Blog Post
Decoding talent's blueprint: Key takeaways and stories from the THI roundtable
Amidst the bustling energy of London's St Pancras Station, where throngs of commuters rush through, an extraordinary event unfolded on November 30th. Cornerstone, together with Perry Timms, Founder and Chief Energy Officer at People & Transformational HR Ltd, and Dominic Holmes, Principal, Strategy and Value at Cornerstone, organised a captivating roundtable that transcended the station's hectic ambiance to delve deep into the essential flow of talent within businesses.
Blog Post
TXP: 5 ways to transforming employee experience
We live in the era of infinite digital experience, one in which the customer’s last best digital experience becomes the minimum standard they will accept. The customer’s experience delivered via mobile, tablet and desktop translate to the workplace; employees expect a customer-centric experience that is designed around their needs, one that is intuitive, simplified, personalised and available on any device. The shift to hybrid / remote working has raised and amplified employee expectations for their enterprise applications to mirror the best experiences available in the consumer realm.