Ghosting candidates was once a practice that was rarely experienced but in recent years has reached unprecedented levels. There may be numerous reasons for ghosting a candidate and applicants themselves can be just as guilty but what is the impact on the recruiting organisation’s brand from ghosting candidates.
Ghosting refers to the practice of cutting off all communications with another party and in effect becoming a ghost. Recruiters and human resources teams sometimes experience ghosting from candidates in the recruitment and selection process, usually because they secured an alternative position. However, this practice by recruiters in organisations and recruitment agencies is now almost common place at every stage of the selection and interviewing process.
Why Recruiters Ghost Candidates.
Recruiters and human resources are always working under pressure to recruit the best fit candidate in the fasted time and at the lowest cost. This can lead them to focus on their preferred candidates which means that less attractive talent gets ignored. Other factors may be due to poor training or inefficient recruitment processes and where the recruiter is not capable of making a timely decision. Some recruiters just don’t like being the bearers of bad news and avoid contacting rejected candidates at all costs. The recruiter could simply be away on holiday or may even have been fired themselves.
Brand Damage.
Candidates that experience ghosting from a recruiting organisation will almost certainly share their poor experience with another 15 people*. Given the extent of social media platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor it does not take long for brand damage to occur. This brand damage can potentially reduce the size of any talent pool for future recruitment campaigns. It takes years to build a brand and reputation but this can be severely damaged by poor recruiting processes that lead to candidates being ghosted.
Remedies.
Placing the well-worn statement on recruitment advertisements of “only successful candidates will be contacted’ is definitely not the answer. Using this statement is an indication of inefficient recruitment and selection processes and will put off most people from even applying. The ideal solution may be to get the recruitment and human resources teams appropriately trained to make them more efficient and to fully understand the negative impact of ghosting candidates on their brand. Using ATS or CRM tech hiring tools can greatly assist in managing contact and communication with candidates through the selection process and can be automated to some degree although each message can be personalised with the right technology. Using the right tech can help to reach the overall objective of hiring the right candidate faster at a reduced cost and free up time for recruiters and human resources to contact unsuccessful candidates with feedback and most importantly enhance the recruiting organisation’s brand.
One such company who are game changing the face of recruitment by providing a robust process to deliver more efficient recruitment without bias is Hire Digital. A start-up recruitment company with a global presence that has invested heavily in Artificial Intelligence (AI) to manage the digital tech recruitment process. Their talent management ATS software platform gives digital talent recruiters a strict criterion for posting job adverts and descriptions and their AI works in such a way that it generates a much smaller more targeted candidate list by using up to 40,000 attributes. They key to this is efficiency, recruiters spend less time generating job advertisements and trawling through hundreds of CV’s to get their shortlist, Hire Digital tech can rapidly access up to 1bn talent globally.
Hire Digital is an AI technology with a human touch that is completely revolutionising the recruitment and selection process. It’s two times faster, 50 % cheaper and ten times more accurate than traditional hiring tech. To find out more speak to Robin Brohl at Hire Digital he is a real person and would love to engage with you and help you streamline your recruitment processes.
*Research by White House Office of Consumer Affairs