During the interviewing and recruitment process, it is really important to treat potential candidates in the same way that you would treat your customers. The recruitment market in Australian cities like Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne is competitive and you really can’t afford to not make a good impression every time you deal with someone!
What this means is: respond punctually, be respectful, and help candidates grow through feedback even if you decide they are not quite right for your business. Need to know why this is so important?
Here are 5 Reasons to Treat Your candidates Like Your Customers and why it is is fundamentally important to the success of your business:
You are selling your business
To your customers, you are selling a service or a product. To a candidate, your business is the product. Recruitment consultants and Marketers have very similar jobs — to demonstrate that a product is exciting and unique by communicating exactly what the product is and promoting interest in it. Whether or not the candidate is employed, recruitment consultants or your HR Department are still the first point of contact a candidate will make with your business. Make it really count by giving your recruiters the tools they need to do the best job they can do. Value their position in the business and the impact that they can make to the bottom line.
How you sell your business matters massively
Brand reputation is incredibly important. When you treat a candidate poorly during the hiring process, you lose the chance of making them a fan of your business and you lose the potential to make them a customer. What is more, word-of-mouth is to the power of 2,000 these days thanks to social media. Poorly handled recruitment strategies joined with an unhappy candidate who decides to send out an unhappy tweet or Facebook post about your company, can mean really negative press for your brand. Be clear with your recruitment strategy, act respectfully and professionally. It is much easier to do this than to do damage control.
Your candidates will turn down job offers because of how they are treated during the recruitment process
Many candidates get the first idea of your business during the recruitment process and will be assessing during that time whether or not they want to work for your company. If your business does not express the appropriate amount of interest and concern for candidates during the recruitment process, that will obviously have a negative impact. In fact, it is the number one reason a candidate will turn down a job offer. Make sure you handle the interviewing process in a professional way and your hiring team will make sure that a candidate has less of a reason to turn down the offer should you decide to make one.
Your timeliness matters
Candidates can be put off by an unprofessional or underwhelming recruitment process. For example, say a perfect candidate goes to your website and puts in their application, but doesn’t hear back for a month or longer about whether your business is interested or not. Believe us when we say they won’t waste their time waiting for your response—they will move on to the next company who is probably a competitor of yours. Situations like this are wasteful and should be avoided, especially if you’re hiring competitively within a precise demographic. You simply can’t afford to let a great candidate disappear because of an unanswered application. That is incredibly bad for business.
You truly have to treat your candidates like customers because your candidates are your customers.
Recruiting effectively is simply recruiting with respect. Do this always. Treat candidates like customers and you will gain respect, build relationships, and gain new ones. And you will improve your reputation in the market with a simple strategy of respecting everyone that your company comes into contact with. You have to set the standard high.
And if you use a recruitment agency treat the Recruitment Consultant with respect too – respond punctually, be respectful, and help them to help their candidates grow through feedback even if you decide you don’t want to see the candidates that they submit because on paper they are not quite right for your business. It is still your brand that they are promoting and taking a week to come back to a consultant after they have presented a short list does not show your business in a great light.
Work with your candidates, HR Team or Recruitment Agency in the right way and you will definitely make the right impression and ultimately hire the right employee.
