A candidates point of view
As recruiters, and more often in this market of high unemployment, our roles take on a slight counselling angle. Many good candidates have been unemployed all year, and their job search has become exhausting. For some, their spirits have been damaged as before the average good candidate would only have to apply for three, maybe five jobs to secure one.
These candidates are now receiving rejection letter, after rejection letter and all because there is just too much competition out there. As the numbers of active job seekers increases, more organisations are taking on the recruitment process themselves as they often have a good response to their own advertising.
Unfortunately, handling the quantity of applications received can be a challenging task for an employee who has very little time to dedicate to recruitment, responding to and dealing with applications can be pushed down the list of Priorities. Therefore, Alpha decided to put together a very brief survey on how candidates are finding the employment market at the moment, and thought employers may be interested in the results!
In terms of organisations acknowledging candidate applications, the results weren’t too bad. 78% of respondents felt that they received an acknowledgement to their application most of the time, which is great.
The next part of the process for the candidate is the waiting game…. Whereas the process from here in gets very busy for the employer. When it comes to strategic planning, operation and implementation, communication is key. It is the same with recruitment. Recruitment is the result of a strategic business decision and therefore, should be carried out with the highest level of professionalism.
Nothing moves faster than negative feedback, therefore it is important to make the recruitment process as fair, straightforward and transparent as possible. So, how are employers doing with protecting their business reputation by keeping candidates up to date with the recruitment process?
22% of respondents felt that they were never kept up to date whereas 33% felt that employers keep them up to date most of the time. This means that half the time businesses are keeping applicants up to date with the process. (see below)
When candidates receive a “thanks but no thanks” response from an employer they benefit from understanding why they were unsuccessful. Firstly this helps them to understand where the employer is coming from and secondly, it helps them to learn where they could have done better, or to only apply to roles they know they have the skills and abilities to perform well in.
When it comes to giving feedback, 44% of respondents felt that they never receive feedback as to why they were unsuccessful. Of course it can be a very large task to respond to each candidate in specific detail if over 100 applications were received, therefore it could be an idea to let candidates know they were unsuccessful in an email or letter, along with an invitation for them to call for further feedback.
Going back to business reputation it was interesting to see that one out of every two candidates feel their application is often ignored, and of these candidates 50% would not apply to the organisation concerned again. This shows it is vital the process is handled well and all candidates are responded to in a timely fashion. Of course, when a candidate feels they have been well looked after in the process, often they will pass good feedback onto others about the organisation concerned – even if they don’t make the cut – so well worth the extra time and effort for free positive publicity!
How can employers make this process easier? Well it is about systems and processes at the end of the day. In this market recruitment is particularly challenging for employers as people are finding a much larger response to deal with, due to the number of candidates actively seeking employment. After speaking to a few of our clients we have been told that after the initial culling back, they are still left with 30 or 40 CV’s to long-list.
After spending all day going through this response good résumé’s all start to look the same... how do you decide who makes the shortlist? This is where an agency may be of use, or if this is not an option, put some solid processes in place. Draw up a process map and assign team members to certain parts of the process. For example, have someone responsible for receiving the feedback request calls, and have someone responsible for regular updates. If the process is taking longer than anticipated, let the applicants know there has been a delay.
We also asked some open-ended questions in our survey and here are some of the responses we got from candidates who have been looking for a new role for an average of 5 months:
“The largest challenge is that so many people apply for the one job and companies are tending to use more than one agency.”
“I applied for 182 positions, all within my expectations. It was coping with the rejections, feeling as though I could not leave the apartment in case I missed a call, and with each rejection each day that passed really scared that it was not going to happen.”
“There are so many candidates out there at the moment that over qualified people are going for jobs under their level making it difficult for the candidates who want to progress in their career go for challenging roles. This would be employer specific.”
“Being made redundant in the middle of a recession was not helpful. I was fortunate that I was getting some interviews and on nine occasions I know I was one of three in the final count. In the end it is an experience that I could not afford and never want to experience again, as it is not only me that is effected, there are those in the extended family and those friends who want to help but do not know how - they feel embarrassed and some even do not keep in contact as much as they previously did which is something I can understand.”
Generally across the board common factors in these challenges stemmed from age discrimination, the high unemployment rate and the lack of jobs available.
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