Before we tell you how to reduce candidate ghosting; you may be wondering what on earth it is? No, we’ve not brought Hallowe’en in early – Candidate ghosting is when job applicants suddenly stop responding during the hiring process and has become frustratingly common. 45% of candidates are ghosted – reported by hiring platform Greenhouse.
But the good news is, there are steps you can take to prevent it from happening.
1. Move Fast
Now we don’t mean the rush the process but don’t hang about either! Long delays can cause candidates to lose interest or if they are active on the job hunt they may accept other offers.
Be ready to interview as soon as you have seen a candidate you like, don’t wait until you can fill a full day up with interviews, and once you have seen the right person consider making an offer. You may want to see more than one to make sure you are getting the best available, which if you have a decent number of applications is possible to do. But for niche roles you may not be spoilt for choice and you don’t want to lose a good candidate because you were waiting to see if there is another one!
2. Improve Communication and Transparency
Candidate ghosting happens when they feel in the dark or undervalued. Keep in touch with your candidates; especially if there are several stages to go through. You don’t want them wondering where they are in the process or what is happening next.
Explain your recruitment process from the start; if there is going to be a task; a particular form they need to fill or exercise to go through – put the detail in your advert. Candidates will self-select themselves out the process if this doesn’t interest them which is better than them ducking out part way through the process and ghosting you.
3. Make the Experience Human
Treat each candidate as a person, not a number. This is particularly prevalent if you are recruiting in large numbers. If you treat each candidate as bums on seats rather than individuals; you will not build a relationship up with them and they won’t think twice about ghosting, you.
Emails are needed to keep track of communication, but phone calls are good to keep things personal and for giving feedback.
4. Pre-Qualify Candidates Better
The better the fit, the less likely candidates with ghost you. Be clear about what skills and experience you are looking for so candidates can self-select. But also think about what steps you can put in to place to screen your candidates before you get to involved with them.
One of our clients was recruiting for a sales role that would be spending a lot of time on the phone to leads. So, once we had screened the CVs; those that we thought might be suitable we got to record a scripted phone call as a voice note through WhatsApp. Being able to hear their voice, telephone manner and how they would interpret the script were all key decision factors for the hiring manager. And it gave the candidate a flavour of what they would be doing if they got the job.
Also, ask upfront – as part of screening process, ask why they are applying for the job, are they actively looking for a new role for a legitimate reason or are they speculatively just seeing what is out there. The latter are likely to ghost if they are not fully invested in the recruitment process.
But what if you do get ghosted!
If you can demonstrate that you have attempted to follow up with a candidate, but you are just not hearing back then discount them from the process. Send them a polite ‘no show’ or ‘no contact’ message to close the loop.
If all of the above seems like a lot of work then don’t fear – SliceRecruit are here to help. We can run your recruitment campaign as your internal recruitment consultant, keeping in touch with candidates; working them through the process so that you can get the best candidate.