Keeping Candidates in the Loop and Meeting Compliance: Email Templates for Candidate Communication

Positive Candidate Experiences Lead to Better Hires

Keeping candidates informed in a timely and thoughtful manner isn’t just polite — it leads to better hires. From the very start of the candidate process, the way a company treats job seekers sets their first impression of how they might be treated as employees. Giving every candidate timely and respectful updates on your decisions along the way will send the message that your company is the right one to consider and maybe even to work for.

Candidates Overwhelmingly Say a Negative Interview Experience Can Damage a Previously Trusted Company’s Reputation *

Candidates Overwhelmingly Say a Positive Interview Experience Can Bolster a Previously Doubted Company *

Consistently offering a great candidate experience is crucial to hiring, developing, and retaining more A-players — the employees who have the DNA you would love to replicate to create sustained success. Learn more about A-players and the Talent Success Model.

“In today’s volatile economy, positions and needs change seemingly overnight, and so do people’s skill set. The person you reject today might be the person you desperately need next year. With the rapid shifts in the business world, anything can happen to anyone, including you. The person you just interviewed could be sitting on the other side of a desk tomorrow, interviewing you. Maximize your allies in your industry and keep your detractors to a minimum. Even the candidates you don’t hire can be your allies if you treat them right.” — Melana Doyich, Veteran Recruiting and HR Management Expert, via AskTheHeadhunter.com

Treating Candidates Like Valued Customers: Formalize Your Process

Candidates — like valued customers — want and need honest, helpful feedback. And just as with customers, following up with candidates as they move through your recruiting process helps ensure a better experience. Formalizing your communication process guarantees that every candidate knows where they stand every step of the way.

Build a Process for Prompt Follow-ups

We’ve become a society of instant gratification. Your colleagues in sales have learned that customers and prospects won’t wait long to get an answer from a salesperson. Recruiting needs to adopt the same mindset to protect your company brand and not run the risk of losing potential A-players to companies that are faster to respond.

One respected study, reported in Harvard Business Review and later supported by other studies, found that sales representatives who contacted leads within one hour were seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision-maker than those who waited longer.

Follow up with every candidate no later than 24 hours after:

• A phone or face-to-face interview (or 24 hours after a round of interviews, if multiple people talked with the candidate)
• A decision about the person’s candidacy has been made
• A decision about the job they’re applying for has been made (even if they don’t get the job)

“Why 24 hours? At the most basic level, it’s a matter of common courtesy. You need to remember that any rejected candidate is potentially a customer down the road and possibly a candidate at another time. You need to foster that relationship and show them respect. Even if they were not the right fit this time, they might be in three months or a year.” — Libby Sartain

Use Templates and Technology for Efficiency and Consistency

A good middle ground between writing every candidate communication from scratch and having them automatically generated by an impersonal software system is to have templates written for your company that cover a few basic candidate situations. We offer examples in the next section of this article.

Templates not only save you time. They also:

• Avoid sending impersonal and emails that will be perceived as inauthentic and insincere, hurting your employer brand and costing you A-players
• Guarantee that you consistently present your employer brand and the voice and culture of your company

Use Technology

To make the job of preparing and sending the letters easier, a good applicant tracking system (ATS) will include a feature for you to create your own letters — including using your own templates — and to schedule when a hiring manager or recruiter should automatically be notified to send a follow-up communication.

Be Open, Be Helpful, Ask for Feedback

Again taking a cue from marketing — which really is what attracting good candidates is all about — the added value to your company when you personalize candidate communication even slightly can be immense. The key is to treat the candidate as if you (or your son or daughter or other loved one) were getting the letter, email, or phone call. In other words, be polite, but honest. Be supportive, and be clear. Make these as personal as possible. There is sometimes a concern from recruiters about bandwidth on these calls (talking to over 40 rejected candidates), but if done right, they can be a strategic advantage to your recruiting pipeline in the future.

One way to present this kind of more personal information to candidates, which is a different approach for many hiring and HR managers, is using what’s called the SPA treatment, reported on the website Reruiter.com:

• Strengths: Tell the candidate what they did well in the interview or what their strengths were.
• Proposed Alternative: Tell the candidate what they could have done better or what needs to improve.
• Acknowledgment: Thank the candidate for their time.

Honest, helpful, and timely responses that ask for feedback show that your company values candidates and how the job market perceives you, and that you appreciate each applicant’s time and effort.

Rejected or Moving Forward: An Approach for Both Paths

The next section of this article offers templates for emails to candidates you either reject or hope to move forward with at different stages of the recruiting process. Creating a good candidate experience either way is the goal.

Rejected Candidates

No one likes to deliver bad news, and the job of contacting rejected job candidates is often passed down the ladder, with little guidance other than to tell the candidate, “Thanks, but no thanks.” Going a little further is not legally required, but the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) offers good reasons to do so.

“Because a negative applicant experience could turn off future applicants and customers, employers should respond in a professional manner to all applicants, thank them for applying, and do so in a timely manner,” says the SHRM article “Rejecting Candidates: What Should an Employer Tell a Candidate Who Is Not Selected for the Position?”

Reasons for going the extra step with rejected candidates, according to SHRM, include:

• Candidates may be pursuing opportunities with several employers, and awaiting closure with your organization may cost them another viable position.
• No response at all is frustrating and disheartening, and it can result in a negative perception of your organization.

Here are two ways to give feedback that is supportive, without worrying that you’re violating employment laws or putting your company at risk of being sued for hiring discrimination:

Facing the Legal Fears of Delivering the Bad News

Many recruiters are understandably concerned that any reason they give for rejecting a candidate could be interpreted as discrimination. You can avoid any potential for such claims by:

• Communicating your decision briefly
• Giving objective reasons why the person did not get the position
• Avoiding any comments that relate to protected classes of employees as spelled out by federal labor laws

Federal law prohibits discrimination in hiring based an applicant’s race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability, or genetic information.

Putting It All Together: Candidate Follow-up Templates

Below are templates for four sample candidate follow-up letters based on the advice and insight from the previous sections of this article. Remember, it’s not only the details of the offer that matter. It’s important to follow your company’s messaging and communication guidelines to ensure that it communicates your brand and speaks authentically to the candidate.

Using templates for candidate follow-up communication helps you consistently apply recruiting best practices to be able to hire and engage more top performers more easily and effectively, and polish your company brand as an employer of choice. Variable content for this candidate, gathered from the spreadsheet, is highlighted in yellow.

Rejected Candidate: No Interview Was Offered, the Position Is Still Open