Several months ago LinkedIn did a fantastic feature on candidates ghosting employers, and how it was driving them crazy.
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.”
According to the LinkedIn article, ghosting is now prevalent at work and is affecting recruiters and hiring managers. “Where once it was companies ignoring job applicants or snubbing candidates after interviews, the world has flipped,” the article says. Candidates agree to job interviews and fail to show up, never saying more. Some accept jobs, only to not appear for the first day of work, no reason given, of course.
How To Avoid Being Ghosted by Candidates
A simple way to avoid being “ghosted” by a top candidate is to provide more regular communications with them, with relevant information. 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. 3 Easy Ways To Increase Candidate Communications.
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:
- Applicant No Longer Interested – it happens, thank them for applying anyway invite them to stay in touch with your newsletter or social media sites. Let them know if other relevant positions open up.
- 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.
- 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.
- No Show for Start Date – the worst, especially after you’ve invested time with the candidate. Assume something happened, and follow up to make sure they were aware of the start date.
- Unable to Contact Applicant – a typo in the phone number and/or email address (gmail.con or gmoil.com is pretty frequent) could be the cause of this. Try to reach out through social media if you can.
- If you have the correct information, but just no response, try to send a final email or voicemail, with a thank you message leaving the lines of communication open.
About iRecruit
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