How to Use Recruitment Automation to Stop Ghosting Candidates
It’s a scary reality. Complaints from jobseekers about prospective employers ghosting them have grown by 112% since February 2020. This signals an epidemic of organizations ghosting candidates during the recruitment process.
There are several reasons your organization may be intentionally, or unintentionally, ghosting candidates during the recruitment process. Some include:
- A high volume of candidate applications
- Poor communication processes and disorganization
- Shifts in hiring needs
- Avoiding difficult conversations
- Organizational changes
Nonetheless, ending communications with your candidates abruptly and without explanation creates a terrible candidate experience and reflects poorly on your organization.
Fortunately, recruitment automation can streamline candidate communications and stop your organization from ghosting candidates. Here’s a handbook on how your HR team can leverage recruitment automation to keep candidates updated throughout the recruiting process.
5 Ways To Use Recruitment Automation to Stop Ghosting Candidates
Recruiting automation use #1: application acknowledgment
Do you know that 52% of candidates have to wait 3 months or longer to receive a response from a job application?
That wait can cause a lot of anxiety.
When recruiting, the automation of application acknowledgment ensures that you stay in touch with your candidates. Providing an immediate response after they submit their applications confirms that their application was received. It also provides an overview of what to expect next in the recruitment process.
This builds a positive candidate experience by erasing any worries about candidates’ application submissions. It also assures them about where they are in the recruitment process.
Recruiting automation use #2: interview scheduling
Interviews are a principal part of the hiring and recruiting process. However, scheduling them manually can prove challenging. Particularly for organizations that receive a high volume of applications from candidates.
The interview scheduling process is slow and highly susceptible to errors. If communication slips through the cracks, interviews might not be scheduled for some candidates. This can bring their recruitment journey with the organization to a grinding halt and they won’t even know why.
HR teams can efficiently tackle this problem by implementing automated interview scheduling. This form of recruitment automation swiftly and effortlessly finds a mutually convenient time for both the candidate and the interviewer. Automated interview scheduling tools also confirm and remind participants of scheduled interviews.
This recruiting automation speeds up the hiring process and reduces the risk of errors to avoid ghosting candidates, while also ensuring both interviewers and candidates show up to the interview. This added flexibility and seamless operation smooths the candidate experience.
Recruiting automation use #3: candidate support
Candidates often have questions or need assistance at some point in the recruitment process. Responsiveness keeps them engaged, ensuring that they don’t feel ignored or abandoned. However, having a human at the other end to provide round-the-clock support can be a challenge, leading to lapses in communication.
Leveraging chatbots, HR teams can offer immediate responses to candidate queries at any time. Chatbots can answer questions about the application process, job requirements, relevant timelines, and other logistics in real-time.
Using this recruitment automation tool helps HR teams provide standout support to their candidates, nurturing candidate confidence in the process and creating a positive candidate experience.
Recruiting automation use #4: candidate updates
Your candidates naturally want to know what’s next and when. To meet this need, consider using recruitment automation tools to power updates and reminders without lifting a finger.
Regularly calling the candidates’ attention to approaching due dates or next steps in the hiring process via email or text shows that they have not been forgotten. By also giving them a clear idea of their current stage in the recruitment process, you save them the stress of having to follow up excessively to find out if they’re still on your radar.
Recruiting automation use #5: personalized decision communication
New research reveals that 58% of candidates don’t receive notifications when they’re disqualified. This is the pinnacle of ghosting candidates. Candidates deserve to know whether they got the job or not and recruiting automation can help.
Recruitment automation systems work with message templates and personalization tokens to add a human touch to candidate communications. Once a hiring decision is made, the automation tools will send a personalized message to the candidate. Even if the candidate doesn’t get the role, the commitment demonstrated by personalized communication will leave a good impression.
If the candidate successfully lands the role, the automation system can send a congratulatory message and a job offer to the candidate. It can also provide extra details about the role and generally facilitate the onboarding process. Using recruitment automation to communicate hiring decisions to candidates streamlines engagement and shows your respect for your candidates’ time and effort.
Candidates don’t deserve to be left in the dark or abandoned by their prospective employers. Recruitment automation streamlines candidate communication for organizations, ensuring that candidates know where they stand at every point in the recruitment journey. Find out more about how automation and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to improve your candidate experience.