Why is it Vital to give Feedback to Rejected Candidates?

December 2, 2022

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Recruiters have skipped giving feedback or even informing rejected candidates for a long time now. Not hearing back from recruiters after applying to positions has almost become a norm now.

While this might often be a result of jam-packed schedules and overbooked workloads for recruiting teams, it harms the organization’s employer brand and reputation in the long run. It’s a talent-driven market that we are dealing with right now, and feedback emails ensure a positive candidate experience.

Gone are the days when sourcing and hiring candidates were as simple and easy as posting classified job ads and then just focusing on interviews. Things have changed entirely in the past few years. Especially with the soaring competition and the post-pandemic transformation of the global talent market. Recruiters are now required to reach out to qualified candidates who have numerous choices when it comes to employment.

As per a 2021 report on candidate experience by Talent Board, candidate resentment toward recruitment has grown by a staggering 25%. And it won’t be right to say this was unexpected. Around half of the job seekers surveyed for the same report – waited to hear back from employers for over two months.

This might not feel like a huge issue to you but can certainly make or break your employer brand in the long run. 84% of job seekers consider the reputation of a company before applying.

So it’s absolutely important that all candidates – regardless of their recruitment results, are provided with appropriate interview feedback. In this blog, we will dive deep into the numerous reasons why candidate interview feedback is important, how to give feedback to rejected candidates the right way, and the best practices to follow all along. Stick around for an insightful discussion.

Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Provide Candidates with Feedback

It is a Professional Courtesy

The first and most important reason for us is that – providing genuine feedback to candidates who invested their time, efforts, and energy into the interview, is a professional courtesy. You never know how significantly feedback can impact their career and more importantly, life. When you think from a candidate’s perspective, knowing what interviewers and experts think about the candidate’s skills and experiences can certainly help them improve with each interview.

Additionally, your efforts in providing specific inputs as feedback to candidates would also help cure the stigma attached to hiring. A majority of candidates in the workforce accept being rejected even before they actually are. It becomes even more crucial when candidates ask for feedback, you should then make sure to serve them with constructive advice.

Enhances the Candidate Experience

An interview feedback, regardless of recruitment outcomes, helps you avoid leaving candidates wondering or ‘ghosting’ them. Unfortunately, even informing the candidates about their rejection is a standing-out move for organizations today. As a recruiter, you ideally want to maintain a good relationship with all candidates due to multiple reasons.

So if a candidate experiences a positive and engaging experience while applying for a position at your organization, they would most probably keep your company in mind while looking for employment in the future.

Affects Your Employer Brand

We are emphasizing it a number of times - you might almost find it to be cliche by now. But here’s what happens at the ground level. We are living in the age of technology and social media, and the word spreads faster than ever. Over 72% of candidates share their recruitment experiences online.

Suppose you don’t inform your candidates about their rejection and leave them wondering without any feedback, they might share their recruitment experience on online reviewing sites like Glassdoor.

It should be noted that candidates are more likely to spread the word about bad experiences. As people in the workforce naturally trust candidates more than they trust brands, these reviews will directly affect your company’s recruiting ability.

You want Job Seekers to Apply Again in the Future

A ‘no’ is not for a candidate but for their current skills and experience. Once they upskill enough and develop their abilities – they can be a great fit for your organization in the future. That will happen only if you provide them with clear and constructive feedback on their performance in the interview.

Keeping up a good relationship with candidates through transparent and timely feedback is immensely beneficial for companies in the long run. As you keep the channel of communication open with your courtesy – it also reflects your organization’s work culture and shows that you care for your biggest resource – people.

Provides Candidates with a Starting Point to Build

We discussed how huge the impact of feedback can be for the workforce. When you along with the recruitment team serve constructive interview feedback and clearly highlight the areas with the scope for improvement – it becomes a starting point for candidates to build their skills on top of it.

With growing competition and diminishing barriers to entry in almost every professional field – polishing their skills regularly has become a necessity. Rejections often leave individuals with lifelong learning. You can help them go only upwards from here. They might or might not come back to you applying again for the role, but if they work on the feedback initiated by you – growth will be visible in their career and life.

Best Practices while giving Feedback to Unsuccessful Candidates

Giving feedback to the candidates who got rejected is not easy – no matter which stage of recruitment they ultimately make it to. We talked to a number of internal and external hiring managers to come up with the best practices while giving feedback.

Here are the top 6 tips that will significantly improve the quality of your feedback to unsuccessful candidates.

#1 Ensure Timely and Personalized Feedback

As soon as you get to know about a candidate’s rejection, the first thing you should do is inform them about the same. Candidates usually end up waiting for weeks and even months sometimes, you don’t want that to happen. It’s really an anxious feeling – waiting for career updates, and a lot of candidates actually reject certain offers in the hope of better ones.

This should be followed for the entire recruitment funnel – whether a candidate was rejected in the screening round or interview stages. An ideal approach is to ensure a candidate is informed within 3 working days after the interview or assessment.

Additionally, you should also personalize your interview feedback emails, here’s how you can do that:

Include their first name in the email
Pick up a few elements from their resume like skills, experiences and mention them
Be clear with your interview feedback – ensure adding specific pointers for their performance

#2 Be Sincere with Your Messaging

One thing you must always be careful with while drafting interview rejection responses is genuine and practical messaging. What do we mean by that?

Give them practical and actionable advice on how to improve their skills
Your messaging should clearly reflect that you’re willing to help them grow in their career
Don’t forget to mention a specific reason why you decided to move with another candidate

In most of the cases if you genuinely share your feedback – candidates will appreciate that and consider your advice.

#3 Show Gratitude for Their Interest and Efforts

A majority of recruiters miss out on this step. They do not express gratitude to the candidates and this certainly harms the candidate experience.

As candidates put a lot of time, effort, and energy into your recruitment – as a hiring manager or recruiter, you should always show gratitude. Practicing gratitude and thanking your candidates for applying to your organization would build a positive relationship between them and your organization.

Especially when providing feedback to rejected candidates, it’s a mark of respect to thank them for their interest in joining your company.

#4 Offer Specific and Constructive Inputs

Giving feedback doesn’t just mean sharing the same generic inputs with each candidate. Your feedback is only valuable when it is in the form of recommendations. Ensure to cover the following 3 factors in each of your interview feedback emails:

Why was the candidate not selected?
What were the traits of the other candidate(s) being chosen?
A brief about what the candidate can do to improve in the same direction.

You can also include examples while giving feedback to back up your suggestions. It will significantly help the candidates identify and analyze the gaps in their skills, and improve their strategy in the future.

#5 Praise them for their Strengths

Positive and comprehensive feedback is not just about telling candidates to improve. It also covers recognizing the candidates’ strengths and mentioning them in the interactions. Even if a candidate gets rejected, your feedback interview must highlight their strengths and the areas where they are doing pretty well, and should continue doing the same in the future.

Remember that they were totally interested and excited about the opportunity – that was the primary reason they applied for your job. Being enthusiastic while communicating with them and praising them for their achievements, skills, and relevant experiences can boost the candidate's experience.

#6 Use Interview Feedback Email Templates

You need to personalize and include certain specific details for each candidate in your interview feedback email. However, you don’t need to begin everything from scratch. We have curated a set of rejection email templates that you can directly use for quickly implementing your feedback flows.

In our previous blog, you will find different templates for candidates rejected in the screening round as well as interview rejection emails. Having ready-to-go templates in hand will help you inform rejected candidates and share interview feedback faster. So stop worrying about creating emails from the ground up and start delivering a prolific candidate experience with our curated templates!

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What would be your reaction if we told you that you don’t need to take care of candidate outreach, nurturing, feedback sharing, and managing your entire sourcing pipeline manually?

Here’s the good news – Nurturebox enables recruiting teams to do exactly that. You can now scale up your candidate sourcing and engagement efforts without any hassle. Get started now to provide a superior candidate experience while putting up your talent sourcing on auto-pilot.

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Amidst today’s noisy digital world, brands find it challenging to create meaningful connections with their customer base and target audience. Getting the target consumer’s attention and persuading them to buy from you gets even trickier. Hence, content marketing has become more crucial than ever for brands to attract, educate, and retain customers.

Content creation is a top priority for 80% of marketers, and there is no reason it shouldn’t be. Consistent, high-quality, and engaging content impacts your audience’s decisions through education and persuasion.

Depending on your business goals and requirements, the role of Content Marketers you hire will vary. The primary responsibilities revolve around forming consistent brand messaging and deciding upon a unique and identifiable voice, style, and pitch across various distribution channels.

From raising brand awareness to attracting a relevant audience to your website, boosting social media presence and engagement, generating leads, and building brand loyalty – content marketing drives all the growth efforts for your brand. When done effectively, it can help you:

Build positive brand awareness
Make your audience stick around for longer
Get better traction on social media
Gain more trust of your audience than ever
Generate qualified leads
Improve conversion rates
Boost business visibility with SEO
Position your brand as an authority
Cultivate loyal brand fans

While content marketing is a broad role with numerous areas of expertise involved, it’s vital to thoroughly understand your company’s current marketing goals and the related requirements. In this blog, we will dive deep into the step-by-step approach to hiring a Content Marketer.

What is The Role of a Content Marketer?

A Content Marketer must be deeply passionate about telling your brand’s story to the world. The objective is to educate and nurture the target audience to establish brand authority using thought-leadership and drive more people to buy from you.

As a candidate is expected to be a mediator between the brand and the target audience, they are primarily responsible for planning, creating, and sharing valuable content to grow their company’s awareness and engagement to bring more business.

To be more specific, the role of a Content Marketer requires a perfect blend of creativity and attention to detail in an individual. It’s a balancing role, as they need to ensure creating content that resonates and strengthens business relationships, using strategies that position your business as authentic and problem-solving.

Take a look at the core responsibilities of a Content Marketer that most businesses expect them to take over:

Research and Competitor Analysis: The first and foremost step to creating a content marketing strategy is effective initial research. It not only helps a Content Marketer understand the nuances of the industry through competitor analysis but also study and understand the target audience thoroughly. ‍
Building Content Marketing Plans: Once the competitor research and target audience analysis is done, a Content Marketer needs to work on the different plans for all the business objectives, targeted channels, segments of the audience, and the bigger marketing strategy. A content marketing plan typically consists of:
Specific goals along with a pre-decided timeline
Various channels to be targeted for content distribution
Types of content to be created
Budget for the entire staff, outsourced services, and paid promotion (Collabs and Ads)
Creating Editorial Calendar: Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is one of the most crucial responsibilities of a Content Marketer. It is a centralized visual document that enables effective collaboration among the marketing team and helps Content Marketers ensure on-time production and delivery.‍
Content Creation: Once the strategy and calendar have been approved by relevant stakeholders, Content Marketers need to do the on-ground work. This task usually depends on the scale of your company and content marketing strategy. Suppose an organization already has a set of writers, then the Content Marketer doesn’t need to create content by themselves.‍
Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Producing quality content that educates your target audience and resonates with them, isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content creation to make it search engine-friendly. While most companies need a dedicated SEO specialist for keyword research and planning, Content Marketers need to closely collaborate with them and should be well-versed in the basics of SEO.

While the practices discussed above are primary responsibilities of a Content Marketer, they also need to be proactive with

Content editing and ensuring adherence to a certain style guide
Continous publishing and distributing content
Measuring and analyzing performance

How to Hire a Content Marketer: Step-By-Step?

Content marketing has become the key to driving growth for businesses. Unlike a few years ago, it’s not possible now to get away with a one-person team for content marketing. You need deeply trained individuals for specialist roles.

Let’s now dive into the step-by-step approach of hiring a Content Marketer. But before you even source your first candidate, you should have a clear expectation of the skillset and experience to look out for top content marketing candidates.

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Step 1: Create a Candidate Persona

Let’s sort out the priorities first, and decide the type of content marketing candidates you want to recruit. From exceptional research skills to storytelling, communication skills, relationship building, audience engagement, and more capabilities must be comprehensively considered. Identify and break down the skill requirements for Content Marketers:

What are the educational qualification criteria for the role?
How many years and what type of work experience do you want in candidates?
What are the specific skill sets you’re looking for?
Which industry experience would you primarily prefer?
Are there any tools your candidates should be hands-on with?
What are some personality traits that will fit your company?
Where do they look for a new job?
What are their career and life goals?

Forming a candidate persona by answering all these questions would ensure you are not shooting in the dark while sourcing candidates. Further, it helps you determine the traits of the ideal candidate, and plan your sourcing and recruitment strategy further.

Step 2: Document the Role Requirements and Decide on Your Recruiting Process

Next step is determining your role requirements suiting primarily to organizational needs and business goals. A content marketing professional is expected to own the entire content strategy, creation, and distribution. But what about your business’s unique requirements?

You might need someone comfortable with frequently creating long-form content pieces like blogs, ebooks, or whitepapers, or creating engaging video content based on your industry trends.

Talk to various relevant stakeholders for seeking the complete detailed company requirements for the role.

Before you enter the recruitment funnel, outline your talent acquisition process. Identify various strategies, channels, and other informational insights you would need – and maintain a collaborative document.

As you update the tactics and tweak your recruitment process for meeting hiring requirements optimally – keep your document up to date.

Step 3: Prepare a Content Marketing Job Description

Once you have finalized the role requirements with respect to your current content marketing goals and team, you can start sourcing candidates. Preparing the job description is the first task you’ll need to do.

Here are the necessary components you must have in your job description:

Job Title: The position you’re looking to fill. For example - Content Marketing Specialist or Content Marketing Manager.

Roles & Responsibilities: An outline of the candidate’s day-to-day activities. From ideation to implementation and the impact on the organization, everything should be covered.

Skill Requirements: Skills and abilities a candidate must have to perform the job successfully.

Perks and Benefits: The compensation details, perks of the job, and any other benefits.

About the Company: Why should a candidate consider working with your company?

Content Marketer Job Description Template

Role

The job of a Content Marketer is to perform competitor research, create user persona, and write plagiarism-free content for blog articles, social media, and the company website. They need to stay updated on the latest SEO techniques.

Responsibilities

Develop, write and deliver persuasive copy for the website, email marketing campaigns, sales collateral, videos, and blogs
Build and manage an editorial calendar; coordinate with other content crafters to ensure standards
Measure impact and perform analysis to improve KPIs
Include and optimize all content for SEO
Contribute to the localization of processes and content to ensure consistency across regions
Review and implement process changes to drive operational excellence

Requirements

Proven content marketing, copywriting, or SEO experience
Working knowledge of content management systems like WordPress
A well-maintained portfolio of published articles, blogs, copy, etc
Proven experience of working under pressure to deliver high quality output in a short span of time
Proficiency in all Microsoft Office applications, Google Suite
Fluency in English or any other required language

Soft Skills

Excellent verbal and written communication skills
Excellent writing and editing skills
The ability to work in a fast-paced environment
The ability to handle multiple projects concurrently
Strong attention to detail and the ability to multi-task projects and deliverables

Step 4: Source Candidates

Once you have the tailored job description in hand, it’s now time to do the groundwork and source candidates. Create an attractive job post to promote your job across job boards and social channels.

Begin with what to expect from the role at your company?
Why should candidates apply for the position?
Highlight the growth opportunities
State the company vision and mission
Briefly describe the recruitment process

Prepare an impactful job post and also execute paid job ad campaigns if required. The next step would be promoting your jobs on various job boards and hiring platforms. You can leverage the following platforms for hiring Content Marketers:

LinkedIn
Indeed
Instahyre
ZipRecruiter
Monster
GlassDoor
CareerBuilder

Not to forget - almost 3/4th of the workforce includes passive candidates, so you cannot miss out on passive talent sourcing as well. Reach out to qualified candidates on communities, LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Facebook to offer them suitable opportunities.

Step 5: Evaluate Candidates and Interview Shortlisted Ones

Once you have filtered candidates based on their experience and skills listed on their profile, it’s time to evaluate them deeply. Ask them to create a content strategy for your website, along with a value-adding content piece like a small blog. The topic of the article must fall within the scope of the strategy.

Interview the candidates whose profiles got shortlisted. Keep in mind the parameters covering skills, relevant experience, and personality traits of candidates.

Step 5: Make the Hire

Reach out to selected Content Marketers and communicate about the compensation.

Further, extend your offer letter to all the candidates who have been selected. In the case of passive sourcing, extend to only those who were aligned with you on the compensation and are willing to move forward.

Ensure having a deadline for the joining date and mention the necessary documents required by your recruiting team.

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Get the required documents and set up the offer agreements with candidates
Organize an orientation session for the onboarded candidates
Introduce them to the entire team and the marketing teams they will be working with
Guide the new candidates about your company management tools and communication channels
Provide candidates with forms for benefits and perks like Health Insurance.

Supercharge Your Hiring for Content Marketer with Nurturebox

Inbound candidate sourcing doesn’t work effectively anymore. Do you also find challenges in closing quality candidates through job posts even after spending on ads?

Don’t worry, passive candidate sourcing can be an optimal solution for hiring top content marketing candidates.

Nurturebox is a one-stop talent sourcing and engagement platform which is powered by automation. Here’s how you can source product managers from LinkedIn using Nurturebox:

Install the Nurturebox Chrome plugin and sign up.
On your LinkedIn profile, start sourcing Content Marketers with boolean searches stating the required experience from targeted locations and including other criteria
Add the qualified candidates to your sourcing campaign pipeline with just a click
Automate the candidate engagement through email, Whatsapp and LinkedIn direct messages for reaching out and nurturing candidates at scale.