Your applicants are disengaged—Here’s how recruiters can make the hiring process better

Domino’s online pizza tracker tells customers more about when their dinner will arrive than many companies’ talent acquisition software tells candidates about the status of their job applications.

The average time it takes to hire talent reached an all-time high of 44 days in Q1 2023, CNBC reported, and frustration is growing in the workforce. It can also take up to several months for certain executive-level positions, according to the Wharton School of Business.

Applicants like J T. Ramsay, an active job-seeker who works in digital and social communication, told HR Brew his candidate experience has been subpar.

“Really, none of the [hiring softwares] do the things that are supposed to make it easier for us, as candidates, and where things get stuck is then you end up like the Spider-Man meme,” Ramsay said, “where there’s three Spider-Men pointing at each other, one is the software, one is the hiring manager, and the other is the recruiter, in terms of: What’s holding the process up?”

We spoke with HR experts about their advice on how to improve the candidate experience so recruiters are less likely to lose top talent.

Everyone gets an interview. Candidates may go through many interviews for a single job, but the exact number of interviews varies across industry, role level, and company.

HR leaders need to advocate for cutting the number down, said Havilah Vangroll, owner and CEO of HAVe Strategy Consulting, who works with companies on hiring, retention, and transition planning.

“There’s a lot of companies shopping…where companies want to hire people, they know they’re going to need to hire people, but they’re not really ready to hire yet,” Vangroll told HR Brew. When companies “shop” for candidates, she said, “it’s time wasted and very disrespectful, at the end of the day, of people’s time and energy.”

Vangroll said recruiters should tell hiring managers to either hire the best applicant at the moment, or you let them go from the recruiting process, because asking recruiters to “keep candidates warm” is “nonsense.”

Honesty is the best policy. When companies and hiring managers drag their feet during the hiring process, recruiters need to be honest with candidates, suggested Noah Dresser, a recruiter at life sciences staffing firm Unicon Pharma.

Recruiters can say: “The client [or hiring manager] has some hesitations. It could be for this reason, or they want someone who’s stronger in [a specific skill], like project management,” Dresser told HR Brew. “I just want to be honest with you, you’re still in the process, but you’re not the No. 1 fit.”

No update is an update. When there’s a hold up in the process and recruiters find themselves going days or even weeks without an update for candidates, reaching out with nothing is something, and there’s a responsibility on recruiters to do this tactfully, Dresser said.

“This comes with experience, but there’s a way to craft information…where you get kind of vague or almost crude feedback, whether it’s a rejection or there’s no updates, and when you give that to the candidate, your responsibility, as a recruiter, is to sand it down,” he said. “Make it pretty, put a nice varnish coat on it, and then give a useful piece of information to the candidate.”

While Ramsay said he’s empathetic to recruiters who juggle a lot, it’s also the “bare minimum” to let candidates know there is no update. “It lets me know: Hey, here I am. I’m still in the process,” he said.

Working towards the same goal. Everyone involved in the hiring process—from the candidates and hiring managers to the CHRO—is only human and wants the same thing.

Dresser said recruiters should always remember that they’re playing a “game of inches” and “there isn’t any one thing that will fix the process, but just 1% improvement here and 1% more information there, that adds up, and you’re just building a higher likelihood of success.”