The power of feedback
The power of feedback when hiring talent and the benefits to your business.
To all those job seekers out there, how many times have you interviewed for a job and never heard from the company again? How did that make you feel?
To all those businesses out there on the hunt for talent, how many times (honestly) have you been chased, by the in-house recruiter, the agency or the candidate directly?
We all want to be liked, acknowledged, listened to and even more importantly developed as a business professional. That development starts at interview and can be a fabulous tool for onboarding candidates and understanding what learning and development your future hire might need.
You can not afford to progress candidates slowly in the current market.
A timely recruitment process and feedback is so important. Quite often, the job opportunities that candidates are interviewing for are very similar, with similar organisations. Because it is seemingly so rare for businesses to offer meaningful feedback, you can see why providing detailed feedback could put you at the top of the candidates list when deciding who’s job to accept. If you can execute the timing part right too, for example by offering the feedback within 24 hours of any interview taking place, you might even find that that their speed of response to the offer is also swifter. Win win.
Increase your chances of winning business from your candidates in the future.
There are also commercial reasons why you would always want to do unto others as you would have done to yourself. Time goes so quickly. You see, before you know it, the person you didn’t give interview feedback to all those years ago could be a client.
Imagine this… Company X interviews a Junior Associate, they were a very good candidate and had performed well at interview, however, someone internally had secured the position.
Company X for whatever reason, maybe there was no time or didn’t write up the interview notes, never provided feedback to this Junior Associate.
A competitor hired this Junior Associate and was fast tracked within 3 years of their employment. Fast forward another 7 years and this Junior now holds the position in a FTSE 100 as CFO. A decision maker, the budget holder. The person that signs off on all the invoices.
Company X were keen to work with the CFO’s company. The CFO remembered their experience of not gaining feedback all those years ago, reflected on whether they wanted to work with an organisation whose values were not aligned to theirs and in the end, the CFO did not engage with Company X.
“Clients are candidates and candidates are clients” as they say.
In summary
Whether the candidate you are interviewing is suitable for your business or not, provide timely and meaningful feedback. You will build your brand reputation, help support the candidates development and your chances of working with the candidate as a client or indeed as a future hire will significantly increase.