Has your organization implemented any type of formal or informal ways to get feedback about your hiring and recruiting process? Doing so can help you to gain insights on how to improve the process to make it more efficient. Let’s take a look at why employers may consider trying to get applicant feedback, how they could go about doing so, and what to do with the information discovered.
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Why Would Employers Want Feedback from Applicants?
There are actually several reasons employers would benefit from getting feedback from applicants:
- It lets you see how the company is viewed. Applicant perception may or may not match the employer’s idea of the employment brand they’re projecting.
- You can learn about the aspects of the hiring process that candidates find frustrating—which may help you to improve the process and get better quality candidates in the future.
- You may be able to determine why good candidates are not accepting your job offers or why applicants are dropping out of the process.
- You can assess whether your standard processes are being followed by everyone involved in the hiring process. If you review your feedback promptly, you may even be able to rectify oversights immediately.
How to Get Feedback from Job Applicants
If you’re sold on getting applicant feedback and want to know where to begin, here are some ideas:
- Start with new hires. While they shouldn’t be the entire group you ask, new hires have fresh insights into what it is like to go through your organization’s hiring process and can let you know what aspects they felt worked well and what could be improved. This group is obviously the easiest to contact and you can get the most detailed information from them. Be aware, however, that a new hire may be reluctant to say much of anything negative, which could mean you don’t get the whole picture.
- Ask for feedback during the interview itself.
- Use applicant surveys, sent to all applicants early in the recruiting process. You may not get responses from most people, but the responses you get can even be anonymous if you choose, which may improve the response rate.
Tomorrow we’ll look at a few more tips about getting feedback from applicants, and some ideas of what to ask.