Companies like to brag about their focus on diversity, employee engagement, and motivation. They talk about supporting mental wellness and avoiding burnout in their employees. They spend a lot of time and money putting together attractive benefits packages to attract and retain the best talent. Yes, these things are important but there is a lot more going on in the minds of your job candidates.

I think companies can lose sight of the job’s importance in the life of the employee. I am thinking about salary, time, and stress.

• Salary. The salary I earn supports my entire life. My mortgage, car, insurance, utilities, food, vacation, entertainment, education, etc. for my entire family.

• Time. In many cases, I spend more time at work than I do with friends and family. Sometimes, even more than I sleep.

• Stress. Because of the dependence on the salary, the amount of time spent working and the pressure and tension that comes with many jobs, stress (or lack of) is another key factor around the importance of a job in an employee’s life.

During my recent job search, I noticed that companies can become very self-centered during the recruitment process. They have a business to run. They want to grow and be profitable. They have an open position that needs to be filled as quickly as possible. They want the top candidate. They don’t always think about what the job seekers want. Or how we feel.

Having just experienced a layoff and a successful job search, I wanted to share my experience as a job seeker to help companies improve their recruiting efforts. This goes beyond the HR department or the hiring manager. In my case, I was interviewing for Director and VP marketing jobs. I met with third-party recruiters, fellow marketers, creatives, project managers, sales leaders, COOs, CEOs, and people in client support roles.

What is recruitment?

From the company perspective, recruitment refers to the process of attracting and identifying candidates, narrowing down the top applicants, screening calls, interviewing meetings, evaluating candidates, selecting the best fit, making an offer, negotiating, hiring, and onboarding new employees.

From the candidate’s point of view, it refers to the cumulative efforts made by the organization to make me want to work for you. This includes:

• The language used in the job description.

• Information on the website and social media about your culture.

• The wording of auto-responder emails.

• The ease and functionality of the ATS (applicant tracking system).

• The tone, actions, and responsiveness of all interviewers.

• The experience with third-party recruiters reaching out to passive candidates.

• The length of time in between each recruiting and interview step, along with the communication during lengthy delays.

• Responses to reviews (negative and positive) on sites like Glassdoor.

I would advise employers to put more focus on the term “attracting” all throughout the hiring process. Attracting candidates doesn’t stop after we apply for the job. Every conversation, every auto-responder email, and every Zoom call has an effect on my opinion of the company, the job, and the opportunity. I believe that how a company treats you during the interview process, is how they will treat you as an employee.

Simple Recruiting Tips from the Candidate’s POV

This may be hard for some companies to hear, but recruiting is not all about you. Since my tips are from the candidate’s POV, it’s also about me! Yes, you need to think about your benefits package, work-life balance, inclusive culture, etc. But this is, or should be, a two-way conversation. Here are my tips and hopefully, best practices:

1. Involve marketing.

A big piece of the recruiting process is marketing your company, culture, and job description. Every interaction affects the candidate’s level of interest and attraction. Think about the wording in your job description, auto-responder emails, the career page on your website, and social media post about your culture and philanthropy efforts. Marketers communicate for a living. Let them help improve your recruiting communications.

Here is an example of one “Thank you but No” email I received:

Thank you for your interest in the Director of Marketing position here at {Company Name}. While we were impressed with your background and experience, we have decided to move ahead with another candidate who we feel is a better match for this particular position and our needs at this time.

You don’t have to pour salt in the wound by saying: “Who we feel is a better match for this particular position and our needs at this time.”

Here is another “Thank you but No” email that didn’t make me feel like a loser. I am betting that someone in the marketing department helped write this one.

Thank you for expressing interest in the Director of Marketing opportunity.

We really appreciate your time and effort in expressing interest in joining {Company Name}. We’ve been extremely fortunate to have a fantastic response from accomplished candidates such as yourself. After careful consideration, we’ve made the decision to not move forward at this time.

We’d love to stay in touch as our team continues to grow and reconnect down the line and we wish you the best of luck in your search!

2. Write realistic and appealing job descriptions.

One way you can set yourself apart from the hundreds of other jobs out there is to write a better job posting. I found some of them to be laughable. They list everything under the sun you could possibly do: operations, strategy, execution, win awards, etc. And at the end they want you to leave your ego at the door and be a humble leader. HELLO! If I can do everything in your job description, I am going to be bragging about that all day long!

You don’t need to list a hundred bullet points with every little task this person is responsible for. Qualified candidates can understand the general job description but may also offer related work experience you don’t know that you need.

Take some time to scan the job boards and read job descriptions for the same position. I just searched LinkedIn for Director of Marketing positions. There are over 21,000 results! Job seekers are scanning these results just like you scan resumes. Consider bolding keywords and using more spacing.

3. Expand your recruiting net.

Redefine what qualified applicants may look like. Cast a wider net. I have no room to grow if I have done 100% of the items your list. My dream job isn’t repeating the same job I just had.

Here is some verbiage from a company where I applied during my recent layoff. This language encouraged me to apply.

Research has shown that women and people of color may be less likely to apply to jobs unless they feel they meet every qualification, and we want to actively combat this bias in our hiring process. If you're excited about the role and believe you have the skills and experience to contribute to our team, we encourage you to apply, even if your background doesn't align perfectly with every qualification listed.

Consider posting your open positions on sites like Diversity.com, HBCU Connect, Diversity Job Board, Asian Career Network, iHispano, etc.

4. Treat us like humans.

Yes, you are using online applications and other technologies, but remember there are humans on the other end. During my recent rounds of interviews, I felt like the process was more like a conveyor belt in a manufacturing plant. Interviews were brief and felt rushed. There wasn’t always much interest in me as a person. It was frequently more about a checklist of skills.

There was an abundance of open roles with hundreds of applicants. Some job ads had over 1,000 applicants! Since I subscribed to LinkedIn Premium, I had access to these data analytics. I didn’t waste my time applying for jobs with over 500 applicants. I set my own threshold based on my past experience as a hiring manager. I have personally screened 200-300 applicants from a LinkedIn post, so 500 seemed manageable knowing an ATS was likely involved as well.

I frequently received the auto-responder email that at least confirmed my application had entered their system. I kept a spreadsheet of all of my applications. 12% resulted in interviews, 21% eventually responded with the “Thank you but No” email, and the remaining 67% blew me off and ghosted me. I wasn’t a human on the other end, I was just a PDF document their ATS scanned and disqualified.

5. Have empathy.

This goes with treating us like humans. If you scroll through LinkedIn, you will see frequent mass layoffs and posts from many great candidates with the “Open to Work” banner on their profile. Tech layoffs seem to appear daily. According to CBS News, 1.4 million people are laid off each month.

The bigger story is the stress those families are dealing with. That top talent you are trying to attract also needs to feed their family and not everyone received a generous severance to bridge the gap.

Be mindful when you ask job applicants to prepare lengthy presentations or go through time-consuming assessments or personality tests as part of the application process.

I had one potential employer give me one day to prepare a 30-60-90 day plan and then travel four hours to the home office for a half day of interviews. This was not the only company I was interviewing with so I did not have as much time to prepare as I had hoped. I easily spent four to six hours on my presentation. I made marketing recommendations based on a 30-minute interview with the CEO. I researched the company’s website on multiple mobile devices and found several technical issues.

My recruiter gave me feedback from the leadership team that they were not impressed with the design of my slides and that I focused too much on their website. I agree that the design of my slides was very basic but I stand by my plan and suggestions. I suspect they were looking for some free marketing ideas and had something specific in mind that was not a match for me.

This was not a great candidate experience and I lost an entire day driving back and forth. I did agree, however, this was definitely not a fit for me. If they had a little more empathy for me, we could have done the meetings via a video call and not wasted eight hours of driving and an overnight stay.

6. Cover letter: yes or no?

I would love it if each job post clarified if they want/require a cover letter, or not. Many online application systems allow you to upload a cover letter but the job post rarely mentions it. Why not just tell us if you want it or not?

The cover letter is a topic I just can’t let go of. During my job search, I had three recruiters tell me to skip the cover letter. They said it is old school and can “date” me as an older candidate. They also said with the large volume of potential candidates and resumes they see on a daily basis, they don’t have time to read the cover letter.

I still believe the cover letter is the place where you can tell your story and add personal details about your relevant experience. I agree with the recruiters that you can’t use the same note for every job. The letter has to be succinct, easy to scan, and highlight relevant skills or experience that is directly related to the job. My best interviews came from applications when I wrote a targeted, custom cover letter.

7. Allow more than 30-minute interviews.

I believe that the ideal candidate will come to the interview with a list of their own questions to ask. This should be a two-way conversation. As the hiring company, you are asking someone to make a life-changing decision, to switch jobs or to take a job with you, based on a couple of 30-minute conversations.

Let’s break it down. Let’s assume the call or meeting starts exactly on time.

• 1 minute: Quick introduction, nice to meet you, thank you for making time for me.

  • This should be longer so you can build a rapport, be more personable and create a positive experience.

  • Anyone who is involved in the interview process should do their version of why this is a great place to work. You may need to train the people involved in the interview process on how to build a rapport, how to ask effective interview questions, and how to continue recruiting the candidates so they want to work for you.

• 2 minutes: They ask you the classic “So, tell me about yourself” question.

  • You have to be prepared for this one. Almost all of my interviews started with this!

  • Two minutes will fly by. Realistically this is a few minutes longer.

• 5 minutes: Hiring manager explains a bit more about the job and the company. Hopefully, they try to recruit you and tell you how awesome the company is.

  • Ideally, this would be longer too. Tell me more about why the company is successful, what a great environment it is, how awesome the team is, etc. This should take longer than five minutes!

• 18 minutes: Interviewer peppers you with questions about your experience and how it relates to their exact needs.

  • This is not a lot of time to go through questions about the hard and soft skills required, along with situational and behavioral questions.

• 4 minutes: Your chance to ask your questions.

  • How long has the position been open? What does success look like? Describe your management style and work environment. What are the next steps in the interview process? Whoops we are out of time!

When I am interviewing for a new job, I start doing the job in preparation for the interviews. I could fill 30 minutes with my own questions about the job, team, tools, process, budget, etc. If you need a few ideas on questions you can ask, I wrote an entire post on 19 of the Best Questions to Ask in an Interview.

8. Don’t ghost us.

No one likes getting ghosted. Especially job seekers. I don’t understand this concept when it comes to recruiting. Companies put a lot of effort into attracting the right candidates and getting us to apply and interview only to ghost us.

I understand that things may move slowly in some organizations. But I believe you may lose out on the perfect candidate because you took too long to schedule the next interview and you left them hanging with no communication. And remember my suggestion about having empathy? If I am laid off, I am moving fast and working hard to find a job as quickly as possible.

During my recent job search, I was ghosted at the middle and the end of the process. By ghosted, I mean the company went radio-silent. They stopped communicating. They did not respond when I reached out.

In one case, I thought I was in the final stages of the recruitment process and I was expecting a job offer. I sent thank you emails to everyone I interviewed with, and no one responded. I sent emails to the HR team, and no one responded. I don’t understand why someone didn’t respond with a short email “Hi Chris, thanks for the note. We are still working our way through the process. We will be in touch.”

In the scenario of hundreds of applications, it would be very simple to write an auto-responder email, as I mentioned above. Use the ATS to click a button that triggers the email. It’s simply common courtesy!

9. Ask for employee referrals.

With all of the online job boards and easy buttons click to apply, I ended up finding my ideal job via an employee referral. Two sales reps from a former job referred me to my current job and it’s a perfect fit! Much easier than scanning through hundreds of resumes from an online post!

I’ve had seven jobs in my professional career and five of them came via word-of-mouth through an employee referral. This is one of the reasons I enjoy networking so I can help other people find their dream jobs. I wrote a post about it to help students get started. 8 Networking Tips for High School Students.

So, my final recruiting tip is get your employees involved. Help them understand the open position, make it easy for them to make the referral, and incent or thank them for their efforts. It could save you a tremendous amount of time and money.

Additional Resources

• 12 Job Search Lessons Learned

• What to Expect During the Job Search Process

• 18 Ways To Stay Positive During a Job Search