Poor recruitment practices are damaging brands, turning off potential employees and losing customers, new research has found.
An online survey of 2,560 working age adults by recruitment outsourcing provider Capital Consulting indicated companies are not handling the recruitment process as well as they could.
One in four jobseekers said they had been badly treated when applying for a job.
The main gripes from jobseekers about the recruitment process involved a lack of communication. Half were aggrieved that no reason was given for not being offered the job. And half found the lack of acknowledgment of their application the most annoying part of the process.
Not only do poor recruitment practices alienate the individual jobseeker, but the jobseekers then share their bad experiences with other people. One-third tell between three and five people, and a quarter tell more than six.
More than half of jobseekers also said they would actively avoid buying products and services from a company that treated them poorly.
Marisa Kacary, marketing director at Capital Consulting, said: “A huge amount of money and effort is directed at delivering brand strategies to existing and potential customers, but that same attention is clearly not being carried through to current and potential employees.
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“If you treat people poorly during the recruitment process, you could lose them as customers, and they are only too happy to tell others about their bad experience with your organisation, too.”
