Where is my feedback?

A few days ago, I shared an article describing the importance of creating a feedback rich culture within the organisation to promote growth and development of employees.

Sharing feedback is not just important internally but also creates great impact on potential employees and enhances the quality of the candidate experience many folds. It also works toward building your Employer Branding.

According to the annual Voice of Customer program run by Allegis Group globally, one of the biggest frustration that candidates have from the recruiters they deal with is that they never hear from them after the client interview.

Here is a story to testify-

My friend, who was a job seeker in Singapore a few months ago, went for an interview with a fast-growing US Technology organization. She was over the moon to get a phone interview with the internal recruiter at her dream organisation. After the first round of screening, the recruiter put her forward to interview with the hiring manager.

In order to prepare herself better, she asked the recruiter about the hiring manager and what to expect from the interview. The recruiter gave some information, which my friend felt was not enough to put her best foot forward. However, she prepared to the best of her ability, including gathering information about the organisation from external sources. My friend felt that the interview with hiring manager went well. She felt engaged, she felt she built rapport and overall, she felt good about the interview. And now she had to wait… wait to hear from the recruiter. All she wanted to know was how she did in the interview. She did not want to know if she got the job, or if she would be moving to the next step. She wanted feedback.

After several days of follow ups the internal recruiter sent her an email saying she was not being considered further for the role. Naturally, she was disappointed, but she wanted to know what skills she was missing that lead to her not getting the job, so that she could go and learn and work on that particular skill and apply to this organisation again in a few months or next year. She emailed the recruiter requesting a feedback call to provide some comments on improvements from the interview. Unfortunately, the recruiter informed her that providing feedback is against their company policy. My friend was frustrated and left with a bad experience, and felt helpless as she had no idea what went wrong and what she could improve for her next interview. The dream organisation ranking dropped drastically to an organisation she would never want to work for.

What do Employers need to do?

It's the unfortunate truth, employers today are not putting enough thought in training interviewers and hiring managers, and subsequently the internal recruiters, on the importance of a great candidate experience.

At Aston Carter, our conversations with clients these days revolve around educating the HR managers and internal recruiters we deal with on the importance of getting feedback from hiring managers, who are the interviewers and decision makers. We incorporate a calendarized feedback call as part of our process after the interview to gather initial thoughts, not a decision.

The hiring managers we deal with understand that to attract great talent into their team in a skill short market, the quality of the candidate experience before hiring is critical. Thus, feedback sharing needs to start when you are first interviewing the potential employee, and continue through the lifecycle in the organisation.

In an era where talent has all the information they want at a tap of a device, a transparent and engaged hiring process is the absolute minimum that employers need provide to attract the best.