How to Give Feedback During The Hiring Process - Spark Hire

How to Give Feedback During The Hiring Process - Spark HireThe hiring process is stressful and time-consuming. Youre trying to quickly fill an open role so as to avoid stretching your other employees thin, but you also want to ensure that the new team member youre bringing on board is a good fit. Because of this, many hiring managers get sidetracked and forget to give proper attention to those candidates who applied for a job but didnt receive an offer. Heres why its important to respect these individuals and make them aware that youve gone in a different direction It shows that your company cares.People have given up a significant chunk of time to come in and do an interview with you. If they didnt get the job, its easy for them to feel as if this time was wasted. Therefore, acknowledging their efforts and providing as much feedback as possible on how they can improve is a necessary professional courtesy.It keeps the relationship strong in the event that you want to hire them in the future.Just because this individual wasnt a good fit for this particular role, doesnt mean that they will never be a good fit for your organization. In fact, they may be the perfect person for a job that opens up six months or a year down the line. When this happens, you want to make sure that you have maintained a positive relationship so that you can contact them easily. Providing them with a prompt notification that they didnt receive the job, as well as as much feedback as possible about why they didnt get the job is a good way to keep this connection strong.Many times hiring managers avoid telling applicants that they didnt get the job because they feel uncomfortable. They dont know what to say or theyre afraid that the person will get upset. Instead of avoiding the situation, though, its best to handle it in an upfront manner. Here is how to standardize feedback you give to those who werent chosen for a position within your companyPick one person to let candidates know.If eve ryone thinks someone else is in charge of letting candidates know that they werent chosen, this duty will fall through the cracks and the applicants will be left in the dark. Appoint someone responsible for this task so you know that its being handled properly.Decide how much feedback you will give.If you are able to offer a five-minute phone conversation to each individual who wasnt chosen, it would be an important use of your time. Provide a few tips on how the person could improve or suggest skills that they might want to develop further. Keep emotions out of it, and dont act apologetic.Lastly, encourage the candidate to stay in touch. Its always wise to have a database of qualified people on hand for when open roles become available in the future. Maintaining strong relationships with past applicants makes this easy.