Your Applicants Hate You
[Transcribed from video above]
Your applicants hate you. Let me tell you about Candace here.
Candace is looking for a job. What does she do? She goes out online and hits the big three, she hits LinkedIn, she hits Indeed, she hits monster, and what is she going to find when she does that? Right here in Cleveland? Over 30,000 jobs just right here in Cleveland. She doesn't need you. You need what? candidates? She doesn't need you. How is she going to narrow all these down and try and find someone? Well, I should probably go to Google, right? I should probably type in something like, I don't know, what is it like to work at all of these big companies. She goes out and she finds all of the reviews that people are just trashing you for. So we have all these places like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, indeed, they own the SEO for what is it like to work at your company, you haven't put anything out there, she doesn't have anything to find.
She has to go back to the old school informational interview, where she taps all of her network to try and figure out what it's like to actually work at this company. But you haven't trained any your employees on how to do informational interviews. So they don't know that they should respond to this person, she gets silence, she gets nothing.
All right, I'll do it your way, I'll go ahead and do this huge online application that no one wants to do. You're wondering why they're 80% completed, no one wants to do this crap. But she does it, she decides, alright, I'll go ahead and take all this time and you don't respond to her. She has taken all of this time to go through your process and you don't respond to her 5% of companies are actually responding to their applicants, if you want to be the top 95% just say thank you, with a personal email, not one of those prepackaged ones that comes with your ATS. So over time, this is what's going to happen to them obvious, right, they're not going to be more interested in your job than the moment they click Apply.
You have to get in front of these people with a personalized message they have to hear from you. Because this coming from your ATS. They've seen that from the other 30 companies they applied to they know your game by now. You need to respond with personalized messages, or they're gonna start getting pissed. But let's say that she got really lucky and she's gonna get a phone interview with one of these companies that she's interested in. Yes, I get to find out all about what it's like to work in this company. How awesome it is everyone I'm gonna work beside? Nope. She gets to talk to a recruiter about her resume that they could read in three minutes. You need to start asking some better questions. And then okay, I'm gonna send a thank you email because I got a phone interview with a company I wanted. She doesn't need you though. You need her? Shouldn't you be sending a thank you email? Think about that one. She's the commodity right now, not you.
So she gets brought in for an interview, I'm gonna get to learn all about what it's like to work here. And all the people I'm gonna work beside and how awesome it is. Nope. I'm sat in a chair in the same room and I get hired manager of the hiring manager come in and grill me with the exact same questions. I learned nothing. I'm pissed, because this is what I get. After all that time and effort. Another canned email response with our favorite we regret to inform you had doesn't fool anyone their past their past because they got rejected from a job that they wanted that they took time out of their schedule to go do so what's she going to do? I'm gonna go out with my friends and get drunk. I'm gonna get pissed. And we're gonna spit about it and talk angry. Next time they hear about someone who wants to apply at your company, what are they going to say? Well, don't do that. Do you hear what they did to Candace? And now you've just eliminated this entire candidate pool like this guy, you're never going to get them back. They're not going to want to apply to any of your jobs. You got to pay attention to this stuff.
You need to fix your hiring, but it's alright. We're going to talk about it. There's a couple things you can do.
So first, Employer Branding, those sites like LinkedIn indeed, Glassdoor they own the search engine optimization. When people type in what it's like to work there. You got to play their game, you got to have something there if you haven't done it on your own site.
Two, we've got to make it easier to apply. You get three clicks, three minutes, max, if they can't apply to your jobs, and under that they're not going to do it, you're gonna miss out on your candidate pool. They don't want to play that game anymore. They want to find out more from you. And when they do get a chance to talk to you that communications got to be on point.
Third, you got to be open. You got to be honest, you got to be timely. You got to get in front of them with actual messages of why they were rejected, have the guts to tell them. It's okay. They need to hear this stuff. But what you get with this open communication, is you get transparency The transparency leads to trust and trust leads to loyalty. Could you imagine if your candidate pool was loyal to you? The next time you have a job opening? They're coming knocking on your door.
Hiring is broken. I understand, but you can fix it. Good luck.