So you posted a job opening on one of the major job boards and received 400 applicants. Not all of them are remotely qualified, but they took the time to apply all the same. Now what?
You could just ignore them. Talk with the applicable ones, select your candidates and choose your new hire – DONE. But you may just have alienated 399 potential customers. And in the marketing world, it’s like the old Faberge shampoo commercial were one person tells two friends, and they tell two friends and so on, and so on…well, you get the picture. Today that concept is called viral marketing and when the viral message is bad it’s like a deadly virus spreading out of control. And like a virus, there is no easy fix – you just wait it out and hope it doesn’t get worse.
Appropriate follow-up and closure is essential to creating a satisfying recruiting process. Not every applicant will win one of your job openings, but that doesn’t mean that they all have to have bad feelings about employment with your company. We spend a lot of time and money on marketing and advertising in an effort to create a good consumer image about our products and services. It’s a shame that a company will obliterate all that hard work and expense with a small misstep like ignoring a job applicant.
Simply put the recruitment process IS closely linked to customer relations and customer satisfaction. Becoming an employer of choice is no easy task. But effective customer relations, with would-be employees or would-be customers, are fairly easy in today’s technological world. Most of those 400 resumes you received came through email or online. You probably have email addresses for 98% of the applicants you received. It just makes sense then that you utilize email as your communication tool.
When an applicant sends their resume make sure they receive an acknowledgement. This can often be accomplished with an auto-reply email; while not a personalized warm and fuzzy, it does let the applicant know that their resume has reached your hands. Likewise, when the position is filled, send out another mass-email letting all applicants know the position is no longer available. Providing closure will let the applicants know to move on, and in some cases, free up your staff from continual follow-up with applicants wanting to know their status.
My colleague, Cathleen Snyder, worked for the finance arm of a major auto manufacturer years ago. They would get hundreds of applicants for one job opening. Their office would hire temporary help just to assist with typing and sending letters to each and every job applicant (this was before email). That’s how valuable these applicants were as potential customers. Now THAT’S customer service!
Popularity: 9% [?]
