Offering feedback to candidates is vital, especially for students and younger professionals. There has been widespread encouragement towards the British government to make feedback after face-to-face interviews mandatory among all employers in order to improve the application process for job seekers.
In research done by Debut, 77% of over 70,000 18-23-year-olds agreed that feedback should be a legal requirement, and four in five candidates claimed to never have received feedback after interviews.
This is a problem because feedback is vital in order to motivate job seekers and speed up the recruitment process. It can be extremely frustrating for candidates to be told ‘no’ without being told ‘why’.
How can a candidate learn from the experience or improve themselves so that they are better equipped for the next time? So if you needed a reminder, here at the 7 principles to offering quality feedback so that you can create a better candidate experience for all.
1. Manage Expectations
Proactively set and manage all candidates’ expectations by being transparent and clearly explaining your recruitment and selection procedure on your company’s website. This information should include interview stages, timings, what feedback they will receive, and how. Include this information on each new advert and state if the process deviates from the norm if required.
2. Provide Feedback
Always proactively share feedback as a matter of course after a face-to-face interview, in place of only offering feedback if the candidate requests it.
3. Type of Feedback
Consider and share objective feedback about the candidates’ competencies in relation to the job role/person specification as a minimum, but do try to share subjective feedback where possible on the candidates’ performance during the interview.
4. Feedback Medium
If possible, establish how the candidate would prefer to receive feedback – this could be stipulated during the application process. Do consider the benefits of verbal feedback, as it enables the candidate to ask questions and enables a healthy two-way conversation, which may help you to shape your recruitment process.
5. Constructive and Positive
Feedback is designed to help individuals improve – deliver feedback in a positive way by identifying what a candidate did well, and ways in which they can be more successful next time.
6. Person Responsible
Candidates benefit most from receiving feedback directly from the person that interviewed them – avoid watering down feedback by involving too many parties in the feedback process.
7. Time Investment
Invest and dedicate a minimum of 15 minutes when preparing and sharing feedback with a candidate. Aim to send the feedback back to the candidate within three working days of the hiring decision being made.
The strive for feedback is a crucial step towards change that will make life easier for employers in the future – especially as recruitment will be impacted by the aging population and the uncertainty caused by Brexit.
About the author: Charlie Taylor, is the CEO and Founder of Debut, the world’s first careers app dedicated to students and graduates. Debut is used by some of the UK’s leading student employers, including EY, Microsoft & Vodafone.
