The Golden Rule of "Candidate Experience"

Ever meet someone over 100 times and they never, ever remember meeting you? Introductions are redone and you all agree that it is, in fact, nice to meet each other. This kept happening to me in high school with my best friend's neighbor. Did he not notice the giant girl always with his neighbor or remember my witty jokes and the four pack of wine coolers we all shared? Honestly!

This type of self centered behavior has always intrigued me. It has no benefit to the narcissist and is rather confusing to the forgotten one. Really though, what were in his wine coolers?


My point is that there is no reason to make other people feel irrelevant or useless to you. It's rude and more importantly for those who care about their business, it just doesn't benefit anyone. Ah, yes, the candidate experience!

I don't think it's all too difficult to give candidates a decent experience while interviewing with your company. The "wow" experience might be a little more time intensive but a good experience is pretty simple, you need to:

1. Acknowledge the application - in today's world there is no excuse not to at least have an auto-message letting the candidate know their resume was received and will be reviewed. It would be excellent if we could contact everyone who applied but that isn't always feasible.
2. Schedule interviews in a timely manner - hiring managers might not realize it's been a week since the candidate last talked to them but the candidate sure knows. You risk losing them.
3. Send a rejection - I personally prefer rejection letters. I have called people to reject them and have sent letters. They both have their place.
4. Just be nice- don't act like they are lucky you are interviewing them. You're representing your company and no one likes a jerk.

I know there are a lot of other ways to make the candidate's experience even better but it's surprising how many companies don't follow those four basic rules.  It all comes down to the golden rule. Treat others the way you want to be treated. No one wants to be interviewed by a jerk who doesn't let them know they didn't get the job after they've been interviewing for a month.