The Courtesy of a Reply
American businesses can't seem to make the time to communicate with unsuccessful job applicants. That's shameful
As an HR person for 25 years now, I'm tired of having to apologize for my profession. Yet I don't find the criticism of me and my colleagues misplaced. It's depressing at times to answer scores of e-mails from job-holders who share stories of bureaucratic, officious, even hateful treatment at the hands of their company's human-resources staff. But as poorly as many HR departments treat employees, their dealings with prospective hires are 1,000 times worse.
I thought I had heard it all, until a friend in Silicon Valley wrote me with her story of having made eight -- eight! -- visits to an employer, to interview with people on the management team. After that many interviews, you would expect a phone call if you hadn't gotten the job, wouldn't you? No such luck -- she got no call, no letter, not even a boilerplate e-mail brush-off. No communication whatsoever, after eight visits during which she had made friends with the receptionist and met half the managers. How could a company rationalize that kind of shoddy treatment?
The behavior of corporations toward job-seekers is a national shame, unbecoming a country that leads the pack in many other aspects of business practice. Multiple résumés go unacknowledged. Post-interview follow-up is poor, if it happens at all. And if you're lucky enough to get a job offer, don't expect to have all your questions answered or to have been "sold" on the company before receiving it. "Take it or leave it" often is the prevailing philosophy.
THE HIDDEN LINK.
HR people blame the mega-job sites for their worsening manners. When an employer posts a job online and receives hundreds or thousands of résumés in return, recruiters complain, how can they reply to all of them? So they don't. In fact, they often don't reply to any of them.
I thought about the intersection between online job sites and résumé-acknowledgement -- and realized that there is indeed a correlation. Think about this:
You're on a team that's developing what will be one of the Web's largest job-posting sites -- say, Monster.com or Careerbuilder.com. There are dozens of people on the team, evaluating the product as it's built. You do tests -- usability tests, Q&A sessions ad infinitum, and demos for focus groups -- to make sure you check out every bell and whistle.
HIT A KEY.
And so you launch. And what's missing? The one feature that would demonstrate the tiniest shred of concern for job seekers -- namely, the ability for the recruiter or hiring manager to respond quickly or, better yet, automatically, to these people with a few keystrokes.
Isn't it the most intuitive thing in the world, to suppose that as you, the recruiter, review résumés, you could add a check mark next to those that really interest you? Then you could hit a key that would send a pre-written "No thank you" letter to all the other job-seekers -- right through the site. Instantly you would have completed the loop with these people, by communicating four important things:
a) We got your résumé.
b) We thank you for sending it and appreciate your interest in our company.
c) We don't see a good match between your background and this job we're filling, so we won't be including you in the group to be scheduled for interviews.
d) But thanks again -- and please buy our products!
The big sites lack this obvious feature.
TEST TAKERS.
I've talked to reps at Monster.com and CareerBuilder about such a function. Monster.com offers recruiters the ability to construct a quiz, and to send an auto-response e-mail message to people who fail it, letting them know that they're out of the running.
That's not a bad feature, but it doesn't answer the basic question: "How do I let hundreds of people whose résumés don't pass muster know that they won't be considered for this job?" If you already know that someone isn't right, why would you make the person take a quiz?
Anyway, there's no quiz you could construct that an applicant would fail just by virtue of being unsuitable for the job. So you're back to exporting e-mail addresses and corresponding with masses of people. I don't know a single corporate recruiter who goes to that much trouble.
At CareerBuilder, the rep told me that although the application itself didn't include any method for contacting jobseekers en masse, a recruiter could export résumés into another system and collect e-mail addresses if he or she so desired. As if! That's essentially the same as saying: "We collect all this data in our huge database. If you want to use it you can take it out of the database and do what you want with it." You could even write out the applicant addresses on three-by-five cards, I guess.
THE OTHER FACE.
This is part of the national shame -- that such enormous sites could exist for years without ever adding the simple ability to say "Thanks, but no thanks" to thousands of people who post résumés every day. Monster.com and CareerBuilder get their share of the blame -- though one also has to conclude that if the sites don't have this feature, users haven't been clamoring for it.
It's often humorous to see consumer-facing organizations spend energy and ad dollars to style themselves as people-centered, friendly folks. Banks do this a lot -- the "We're different, we're just folks" campaign. They may be just folks when they're dealing with people who will use their services. But when it comes to touching the people who want to spend hours a day working for the company, it's another story.
You don't see advertising that says: "Apply for a job at XYZ Corp. -- We love job-seekers!" I haven't seen any contests or awards for companies that do the best job vis-à-vis prospective employees. Even people who love their jobs say to me: "I almost didn't come to work here, after they gave me such a runaround." So, once you got on board, why didn't you agitate to change things? I ask them. "Well, you know, it's not my area...."
SWEET REVENGE.
So here's my offer to the readers of BW Online. If you write to tell me about a company that treats job candidates well, I'll mention your story in a column. (You can't work in the company's PR or HR departments, though).
I'm especially interested in innovative ways that companies use to connect with prospective employees and to keep in touch with them, or otherwise send them vibes any warmer than a frozen turkey. I'm sure such companies exist. I hope so. Somebody needs to be turning the tide!
And meanwhile, if you're frustrated in a job search with unresponsive and unfriendly recruiters and HR folks, take heart. Baby boomers are retiring in droves, and somebody will have to fill those jobs. Your revenge is right around the corner.
Send your stories of ground-breaking and innovative recruiting processes (ones that befriend job-seekers instead of alienating them) to me at lizryan@worldwit.org. Can't wait to hear from you!
Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace and a former Fortune 500 HR executive. She can be reached at liz@asklizryan.com.
