Applicant Feedback – it’s a minefield!!

It’s a massive balancing act. You’re under pressure to finalise the hiring for some key roles -but you also have some very able applicants who didn’t quite make the grade.

Interviews to arrange, rejections to send and there are still only 24 hours in a day (or 8 in the working day, theoretically at least).

The pressure you’re getting from inside the business can’t be ignored (I call it decibel management – we respond more quicky to the people making the most noise) so you focus there. The rejections go out (“I regret to advise you…..”) AND THEN IT HAPPENS!!

The requests for individual, personalised feedback arrive. The big question is – how much time do you (can you) spend on the people that didn’t make it? And, being brutally honest, how much individual feedback can you actually give?

We’ve all had the rejection letters/e mails/texts:

“We had stronger applicants…” – that’s not about me. If they were stronger, in what ways were they stronger?

“Your experience didn’t match some of the other candidates” – again, not about me. In what ways? Maybe if I’d presented my experience in a better/different way, I could have been successful. Tell me how I could have done it.

“We were impressed with your qualifications but….” What qualifications don’t I have? Or is it my grades? Should I study some more to look like the person you need?

The problem is most ‘feedback’ leads to more questions. And, let’s be honest, there are not enough hours between now and when you retire to send everyone the feedback they would like from you.

The conundrum is good feedback is time-consuming and can be costly BUT it can also be great for your employer brand (AND your future recruitment).

Feedback to candidates who weren’t right this time round has often been seen as a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have’ – but that ignores the undoubted benefits you can gain from providing it. Not all of these can be monetised, but if they’re important to YOUR business, finding a way to provide meaningful feedback, cost-effectively, can make a fundamental difference to your brand.

Remember, giving adequate, relevant feedback will:

1. Strengthen your Employer Brand

• Candidates take a more positive view of companies that provide it.
• Even rejected applicants will often speak positively about the company

2. Create a Talent Pipeline

• Candidates who receive constructive feedback are more likely to reapply in the future when they’ve improved their skills.
• Some rejected candidates could become great hires later, if you approach them directly.

3. Increase Referrals

• Candidates who had a positive hiring experience (even if they were rejected) are more likely to refer others to the company.

4. Reduce Candidate Ghosting & Dropouts

• When applicants see that a company values communication, they are more engaged in the process.

5. Differentiate you from Competitors

• Most businesses don’t provide feedback—doing it makes your company stand out.

But how much is all this worth? As usual, you can see the benefit – but your organisation can’t see the positive pound signs attached – only the cost.

However, there IS an alternative that will give applicants something that shows you value their application and makes them think that, just maybe, they’ll apply again, keep buying your products, not badmouth you to your friends/contacts on social media etc etc etc.

Perhaps it will help if you can answer a few quick questions:

1. Do you assess the people on your short (or long) list?
2. If you do, does the assessment you use provide an Individual (Feedback) Report?
3. Do you have to pay extra for that report?
4. If it does provide one but you do have to pay for it, is that why you don’t use it?

Taking your answers, one by one:

1. If you already use assessments, you are already paying for the best feedback you could provide to your candidates.
2. If your assessment DOESN’T provide this report, FREE OF CHARGE, find a provider where it does.
3. If you have to pay extra for a feedback report, don’t do it. You are already paying enough (too much) to receive this for nothing.
4. If you’re not using the report, because of cost, it’s a HUGE missed opportunity (AND you’re still using the wrong assessment provider!!).

The Great People Inside platform offers an Individual Report for every psychometric assessment TOTALLY FREE OF CHARGE.

You can provide these reports, very simply (automatically), to every candidate to tell them what you know about them as a result of their completing an assessment. Most candidates, from our experience, accept this as more than adequate feedback for the time they invested in your application process.

So, just to get things straight. If you switch to a different, more flexible (and usually CHEAPER) assessment, you can, at a stroke, remove the candidate feedback issue for all shortlisted candidates without any time or headcount implications for you. That only leaves one question – why aren’t you already doing it?