In a context where recruiters are struggling to find the talent they need to carry out their mandates, it’s tempting for them to focus their efforts solely on the candidates who seem most promising. However, Kevin W. Grossman, President of the Talent Board Foundation reminds them of the importance of nurturing their relationship with rejected candidates.
Not only do referrals bring new talent into a company, they also speed up candidate qualification, reduce the cost per hire and increase retention rates (a referral’s tenure is typically longer than an unreferred talent’s), he writes. These are just some of the reasons why employers invest in referral programs. But there’s one source of referrals that these programs ignore: the candidate pool.”
Kevin W. Grossman’s argument goes as follows. According to the results of the 2022 research report, 30% of all candidates surveyed said they were “extremely likely” to refer the company to someone in their network, even though 90% of them were not hired at the end of the process. Conclusion: a “rejected” application can be converted into a company “ambassador”. Provided, of course, that it is handled properly!
Knowing how difficult it is to increase a company’s referral rate, this avenue is well worth exploring. In doing so, companies have a hill to climb. After all, many of them have become accustomed to letting rejected candidates languish in limbo. In data taken from the Greenhouse Candidate Experience Report 2022, 75% of rejected candidates had not heard from us after the job interview. In the Talent Board 2022 report, 63% of “rejected” candidates say they received no “feedback” after the interview.
Best practices
In his publication, Kevin W. Grossman recalls good practices for staying in the good graces of a rejected candidate:
- “Maintain frequency and consistency of communication throughout the candidate experience”
- “Establish a timeline for each stage of the hiring process and communicate it in advance.
- “Implement a hiring process that ensures a high level of perceived fairness among candidates.”
- “Ask for and give feedback to candidates at every stage of the recruitment process, no matter how brief.”
Although demanding, this last practice is perhaps the key to successful referencing. Again according to the Talent Board report, a company that provides feedback at every stage of recruitment increases the chances by 75% that the candidate will agree to recommend the company to his or her professional network.
We’ve seen it again and again in our annual benchmarking analyses: the more positive their experience, the more likely candidates are to refer the company to others. Among companies with the highest-rated candidate experience, the willingness to refer other candidates was 31% higher than in other companies,” concludes Talent Board’s President.
