How to reject Candidates and still retain a positive brand image | Interview Tip: Individual or Collective achievements?

Happy Monday! To those of you who celebrated Easter this past weekend, Happy Easter!

On today's edition of my weekly Newsletter:

• How to "reject" Candidates and still have them walk away with a positive impression of your Organization
• Should you be focusing on "individual" or "collective" achievements at Job Interviews?

How to reject Candidates while retaining a positive image of your Organization

We all know the sting of rejection after pursuing a job we really wanted: the disappointment, the hit to our "ego", regretting telling our friends or family that we thought we "nailed the Interview". In fact, most of us involved in recruitment and hiring dread having to tell a great Candidate that we won't be moving forwards with them. Sometimes the worst thing is, you'd totally hire them - but for some reason or the other, you decided that you would not be able to realistically consider this individual for this particular role.

Firstly, what you do NOT want to do is use that discomfort in relaying bad news as an excuse to not provide an update to the Candidate at all. It might surprise some of you (or not) but I can tell you the majority of Candidates out there are very forgiving of having to hear bad news as long as they are provided with it. Yes - it will be disappointing to them. But you know what angers people the most?

Being ignored, ghosted, and showing no appreciation for the time THEY invested in the process.

It is VERY important that Candidates walk away with a positive impression of your brand. Based on some stats I read (source: Lever.co blog "7 Stats that Highlight the Importance of Candidate experience") which back up the importance of this:

Talent is 4x more likely to consider your company for a future opportunity when you offer them constructive feedback.

Candidates are 3.5x more likely to re-apply to a Company which notified them of their status

Nearly 60% of Job Seekers report having had a poor Candidate experience and 72% of them have shared their experience on an online employer review site such as Glassdoor.com

I'd say its pretty beneficial (aside from it being the right thing to do) to ensure Candidates have a positive experience in order to walk away with a positive impression of your Organization!

So how can you help influence a positive Candidate experience?

There's a lot of good information out there on how do this, but if there's one thing I wanted to highlight which I have seen needing improvement on the part of Hiring Teams, its this:

Improved Communication through status-updates.

You need to be communicating and relaying updates throughout the Interview process to Candidates.

Now at the application stage, perhaps this might require some automation as it might not be possible for someone at your Organization to call/email all ~200 applicants (or however many) who were not selected for an Interview and provide detailed feedback about why, while also maintaining their core duties/responsibilities. Its just not realistic to expect an Organization to do this manually especially if there are multiple roles being advertised where they have to do the same.

But if we're talking about Candidates you actually Interviewed, this means ensuring you are conveying information and updates throughout the interview cycle -if not from yourself directly, then delegated to your Internal Recruitment Team or Recruitment Agency partners. This is such a simple thing to do which creates a positive impression of your brand, its a no-brainer.

In my experience, what bothers people is not that you're NOT considering them for the role. What bothers people is their attempts at communication for receiving an update on where they stand in the Interview process is being ignored and left unacknowledged or ghosted. Especially when they've taken the time to research, prepare, possibly take some time off to meet with you and your Team, etc - its the ultimate disrespect to not at least keep them informed with status updates throughout. It could be as simple as "We appreciate your patience - we're still making a decision on who we'd like to move forward with and will get back to you by [date/time]". And then on the promised date/time, provide a further update - don't just say it for the sake of saying it!

Stay in communication, provide updates, keep Candidates informed - and I promise they will be appreciative of it and leave with a positive impression of your brand even if your decision is not to move forward with them at the moment.

So in summary: ensuring communication throughout the interview process with Candidates and ensuring they're kept updated on where they stand, while simple, can go a long way in ensuring they retain a positive impression of your brand.

If you're an Organization looking to recruit Tech Talent in Canada, send me a direct message and let me know about your plans to grow your Team. I help Organizations find, recruit and secure Tech Talent across Canada.

Interview Tip: Should you talk about your "individual" or "collective" achievements as part of a team?

The Interviewer is asking you to talk about a certain project or something they saw on your Resume which they want you to run them through in detail - now the question is, do you talk only about your individual contributions/outcomes or the collective one's as part of a team, or both?

I discussed this very topic in a recent Live Stream I did where I briefly shared a story about something which changed my views on this. There was a time where I was totally convinced that individual contributions are what matter most because the Organization wants to know you'll be able to deliver results in exchange for their investment in you. While this is certainly true and important, my suggestion is you cover both.

Something I advise is to cover the "we" perspective first and then drill down into the "I" perspective. Talking about the collective team you were a part of is an excellent way to provide context, show where/how you fit in, who you had to collaborate with, and the scope of the project. After establishing this, you can get into the specifics of what you personally were responsible for, what you contributed, outcomes, etc. This will help provide a more complete view of your impact on the project you were a part of, all while showing what a great team player you are/were (and hopefully you are indeed a team player if the position you're applying for requires being part of a team!).

If you're an IT Professional in Canada with 3+ years of professional work experience - reach out to me and let me know your Career plans - I'd love to see if there's anyway I can help you find your next Career move!

That's it for this week - see you next time!

Any topics you want me to cover in a future Edition? Let me know in the comments - don't forget to Like + Subscribe if you haven't already!

Dean Kulaweera - IT Recruiter | Director, Recruitment & Sales |?Tech Recruiters 360

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