Does Your Treatment of Job Applicants Undermine Your Brand Message?

There are many LinkedIn posts these days where job applicants complain about the way they're being treated by recruiters, hiring managers, and their companies.

Yes, some complaints may be sour grapes. Some may be coming from people who were either underqualified or overqualified.

Recruiters may feel their time is being wasted. But my own personal experience — and those of friends trying to get back into the job market after a pandemic-related layoff — demonstrates that the complaints are often justified and that treatment is not only bad for the self-esteem of applicants, it’s bad for the brands of the companies looking for workers.

As communicators, we often find ourselves in reactive mode protecting the brand. But what can WE do when the heat isn’t on in some other area? Try assessing whether your brand is delivering a quality experience for job applicants. Does the experience of job seekers align with what your brand promise and what you say in sales and marketing materials and on your website?

What Would Your CEO Say?

I suspect many senior leaders would be horrified by how people who want to work for their company are treated. Do applicants to your company hear anything after initial contact? Are they left to wonder where they fell short? Do you send out e-mails two minutes after receiving an application that start with “After careful consideration, you are no longer being considered…” 

A few years back, Under Armour acknowledged that its application took a long time to fill out so it thanks candidates with a discount code for 35% off a purchase. I don’t know whether they’re still doing it or what the conversion rate is, but it certainly gets the process off to a good start.

Why is this important to your brand?

A 2019 pre-pandemic LinkedIn survey found that 27% of candidates who had a negative experience would “actively discourage” others from applying for a job with that company. Many job candidates who have a negative experience say they will take their alliance, product purchases, and relationships to another company.

By comparison, nearly two-thirds of candidates who had a positive experience (regardless of whether they were hired) have told researchers they will expand their relationships with the company, according to surveys of nearly 200,000 candidates at more than 240 companies.

If you’re with a large organization, ask someone how many applications you receive per year. That’s your risk.

Below are ways corporate communications and marketing teams can help align HR with the company’s brand message:

Walk in the applicant’s shoes. Fill out the online application yourself. Better, have several staff members do so. Assess the performance of your software vendor and the importance of the information being collected. Once job applicants have uploaded their resumes, do you require them to re-input all that information? Do you provide salary ranges? Do you post “entry-level positions” with a list of skills that required 3-5 years of experience?

Review the computer-generated letters sent to applicants and make sure they reflect your brand message. I’ll never forget that day when a friend of the CEO forwarded him a bad one. I soon had 1,400 letters on my desk and seven days to make them “friendlier.” Expand that effort to other parts of the organization. Consider a letter that says we believe you’re overqualified for this role, or even making a quick call to tell them that.

Notification: Think about your audience and how it is coping with the process of waiting for notification from the brand. For whatever percentage are out of work, not knowing can be worse than being rejected. Are you letting job applicants know if the position has been put on hold? If it’s the time of year when job openings are delayed until new budgets kick in, consider tweaking the process. How do you feel when you pitch a story to a media outlet and don’t hear anything? The job process is far worse because families and self-esteem are at risk.

Provide a general timeline for the consideration process. Does your company send a brief e-mail that outlines when you expect to start looking at applications and your goal for a start date? Do you provide updates?

Check the metrics. Your e-commerce unit monitors abandon rates for shopping carts. Does HR monitor how many candidates begin an application but never complete it? Does HR reach out to find out why? Is there a feedback process? Perhaps you can help HR by offering to supply questions that incorporate a brand perspective.

In sum, marketing and PR are about creating customers as well as removing the friction people feel when they interact with your brand. Job applicants talk to each other and their families and many of them live online. They are going to wonder what it’s like to work at your company if you can’t even show them some love when you’re trying to attract them as employees. And what will they say about your company long after the position is filled by them or someone else?