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In my travels around businesses I am still surprised at how short-sighted we can be when dealing with candidates.  A less than pleasant experience with a company today can colour impressions that last for years.  Candidates that are not suitable today may be suitable in the future or end up as a supplier or customer.  Many years ago I applied for a role (as per the advert instructions) in a recruitment agency.  I left several messages but my call was never returned.  Funny thing was that same agency was contending for our business a couple of years later and enquired why they didn’t make the shortlist.  I explained that I didn’t want our candidates treated the same way they treated their candidates, it reflected on us - what could they say?

If someone has put their heart and soul into their application for your company you can be pretty sure their partner, parents and the neighbours dog knows about their application.  Candidate care is identical to customer service, people tell far more people when they’ve had a bad experience than a good experience. This directly impacts your employer brand.   Regardless of the outcome it is possible for a candidate to have a great experience even if they didn’t get the job.  Surely that could only benefit your brand?

I recently visited a company that have a practice of keeping people waiting at interview to see how flexible they are.  A measure of how long a person is prepared to wait has no correlation to flexibility, it is more likely to be seen as how disorganised that business is or how they treat employees.  If the applicant was happy to wait and thought turning up to meetings late was acceptable practice you’re more likely to have people who never turn up to meetings on time once employed!  

With the press highlighting the recession many people are under the impression that we have high unemployment, 6.6% at the last count is not high!   In 1990 unemployment was over 11 percent.  This time around there are many more people now who are considered ‘underemployed’ in that they are in part-time work when they would rather not be.  So what we have is low opportunities and movement in the market though this is now lifting. High applicant numbers have been caused partially by redundancies and partly by dissatisfied employees who have ridden out the storm and felt stuck in their current employment.  This has meant applicants often apply randomly for roles where they have no experience but the number of suitable applicants has remained generally the same. All of which has driven the impression that companies have many good candidates to choose from.  This has caused bad behaviour towards candidates, agencies often being the worst culprits. The reality is skill shortages in many areas still abound.  Our nearest neighbour has a buoyant job market with only 4.9% unemployment only exasperating our skill shortage.