It’s that time of year again, Spooky Season. If you follow recruiting news, and blogs, you’ve probably noticed an increase in features about Candidate Ghosting employers, and employers ghosting candidates. In today’s increasingly difficult job market, employers are facing obstacles to hiring, which includes candidates withdrawing interest in higher rates, and the radio silence characterized by “ghosting”.
If you’re not familiar with the term “ghosting” Urban Dictionary describes it as “When a person cuts off all communication with their friends or the person they’re dating, with zero warning or notice before hand. You’ll mostly see them avoiding friend’s phone calls, social media, and avoiding them in public.”
Effective Tips to Minimize Candidate Ghosting
A simple way to avoid being “ghosted” by your candidates is to provide more regular communications with them, with relevant information to keep them engaged with you. Candidates often apply to multiple jobs at once, so may not necessarily recall applying with you. Having a strong brand message will help avoid this particular issue. Immediate thank you message to the candidate, as well as regular follow up communications should help.
When you communicate with the applicant via email, or via text, remind them who you are, which job they applied to, and when.
If Applicant No Longer Interested, No Show for Interview, No Show for Start Date, or even Unable to Contact Applicant are showing up regularly in your disposition reports, here are a few things you can do to improve the response:
- If the candidate withdraws or is no longer interested – it happens, thank them for applying anyway invite them to stay in touch with your newsletter or social media sites, especially LinkedIn. Let them know if other relevant positions open up.
- Ask why no longer interested (accepted another job, not available for shift etc).
- Try to have a shorter hiring period. Plan out an ideal timeframe to hire with your hiring manager.
- If the candidate is a No Show for Interview – to try to avoid this issue communicate with applicant before the interview to confirm availability (phone, text, email). Reschedule if necessary. Send reminders the day before, and the day of.
- Make sure applicant has directions to the interview and is aware of time, date and with whom they are meeting.
- Provide interview tips, dress code, what to bring with them (ID, license, vaccination status etc).
- Ask if they have any questions before the interview.
- Unable to Contact Applicant – a simple typo in the phone number and/or email address (gmail.con or gmoil.com is pretty frequent) could be the reason behind this. Fix the email address in iRecruit if there appears to be a typo.
- Check the resume or cover letter to see if email or phone number is typed differently.
- Try to reach out through social media if you can.
- If you have the correct information, but just aren’t getting a response, try to send a final email or voicemail, with a thank you message leaving the lines of communication open.
- Ask Preferred Contact Method (Phone, Email, Text) everyone has their preferred method for contacting them. Many candidates will prefer texting over email or phone for the convenience of being able to reply quickly. Note, Texting is opt-in with iRecruit, this both confirms the candidate’s cell phone number, and gives you permission to send texts to them.
- No Show for Start Date – the worst, especially after you’ve invested time with the candidate. Assume something happened to prevent the new hire from showing up, and follow up to make sure they were aware of the start date.
Share your ghosting tips with us on Twitter @irecruitats.
About iRecruit
iRecruit is a cloud-based recruiting and applicant tracking and electronic onboarding software designed to provide any size of business a cost effective, affordable and truly simple way to manage the recruiting and onboarding process online. With options for Express, Professional and Enterprise, you can find a flexible recruiting solution that meets your needs.
