Best practices for keeping those candidates you’ve passed up happy, engaged, and potentially coming back. 

With candidate volumes constantly increasing , especially with the rise of WFH and WFA positions, preserving your employer brand at scale becomes harder than ever. It is essential to a successful sourcing and pipelining strategy to help all candidates, even those who aren’t qualified for the position they applied for. Keeping rejected candidates engaged is perhaps the most difficult task of pipelining. 

A few automation tricks can help in building a positive experience for these candidates, keep them warm for future opportunities, and even activate them to become referrers for other candidates. Read on to find out about 4 Talkpush features specifically designed to let them down easy, and keeping them interested.

1. Delay in rejection notice

The automated pre-screening process means a pass or fail decision is usually made instantaneously, as soon as the candidate applies. On the face of it, this is a great benefit for the candidate, who is not left in the dark. The conversational AI interface is often used to eliminate candidates based on location or education or any other criteria that your team sets up. But if the application process also requires answering open-ended questions via text, audio or video, it can be a bit jarring for a candidate who knows that their submission didn’t even get reviewed by a human recruiter. Thankfully, Talkpush lets you set up a delay in rejection notice, to show candidates you’re not immediately passing them up (even if in your campaign folders you have). 

Instead they complete their pre-screening, are sent a message with a time-frame they can expect to hear back, and then a few days later, are notified they won’t be moving on the next stage. Nobody likes getting rejected, but at least this way you make them feel like they had a chance. 

2. Be nice

Nobody likes getting rejected, but there’s a difference between an empathetic and encouraging message than just “thanks, but no thanks.” It’s important to try to leave a positive feeling as much as possible, and this includes the candidates you’ll be passing up. A few ways to do this is with personalization tokens, mentioning their first name, school they went to, or apply date are all great ways to give that human touch to automated messages. For example, at Talkpush our users never use the phrase “Dear Applicant” and other generic greetings, instead they use the first name token and job title they applied for to make for a more unique experience. The main thing with personalization, even if it is through automation is that it gives the impression that all applications have been reviewed by a human recruiter and candidates' efforts were acknowledged.

3. Blocking a candidate for 6 months before re-applying

With Talkpush you can set blockers for rejected candidates, so that they need to wait 6 months (or whatever time-frame fits your pipelining goals) before applying again. This feature is a chance for two things: giving your candidates a clear expectation and hope for hiring in the future, as well as keeping your talent pool organized efficiently. Your message template in this notification should be carefully drafted: it should be concise and include sufficient encouragement to apply again, with some steps on what they can do to better match the skills needed for the job.

4. Feedback for near hires

Those candidates who made it to the last stages of the recruitment process, but didn’t land the job, are certainly candidates you want to keep active in your pipeline. A little feedback goes a long way. This isn’t an automation feature (although you can use messaging automation to send them a video and make it more personal.) Nonetheless, it’s a valuable action your recruiters should be taking. You should be letting your near hires know why, ultimately, they didn’t get the job. Not only will this help them enormously next time they apply, but it can also help them in their general job search, increase their brand loyalty, and make them likely to refer other candidates.

With Rejection Reason tokens this is a lot easier to do at scale. With Talkpush, if a candidate is a near hire, the recruiter has the option to add rejection reasons to the rejection message by using tokens, which inserts the rejection reason on their profile. This way, recruiters can easily craft the rejection message, and the candidate can understand why they didn't make it. Another use case for this token goes beyond just near hires. By adding it to the Rejection Reason message template, even if the candidate wasn't a near hire, they still get the benefit of an explanation, which is extremely rare in recruitment.

Some Talkpush users use a different strategy, without outward rejection. Instead they put them in a folder to be tapped in the future. For example, if there's a career fair or new jobs available, they will send re engagement messages so that those candidates can start the application process again.

Considering that the volumes remain increasing and employers simply can’t hire everyone, investing in your employer brand includes how you handle rejection. A good strategy takes care of all your candidates, which in turn will increase referrals, build your pipeline, and help you move towards a global hiring strategy. 

👉Want to talk about how Talkpush can help you turn rejected candidates into brand promoters? You can book a demo below.