Because I think that’s arguable. At a quick glance at the data I have in my own system, the last twelve months we’ve had just over 4200 applicants and 220 hires, which basically leaves 4000 people to care for who may apply again and may become a future hire. Also based on my data, that’s highly unlikely. Almost always, if we don’t hire someone, it’s because we don’t want to, not just because we don’t have a spot for them right then. And the ones I thought might have some potential for the future were kept warm and in the loop. But doing that for all the candidates…

Assuming about ten minutes spent on the phone with each one of these people with these reps you propose, to include the time spent calling, speaking, documenting, and any after call work, etc., you’re looking at just over $20000.00. That’s not chump change. It’s roughly equivalent to the cost of one 100K hire from a third party agency. I’d need to see something more concrete showing some gain in productivity and quality of hire that translates to at least that much of a gain before I tried to argue for the money to make sure everyone is cared for at a certain level. And while I do understand some candidate’s frustration, I think any attempt at GARP would have to acknowledge that, at least for corporate side recruiters, that’s just what we are: recruiters. Not career coaches. I saw a much greater need for more in depth contact with candidates when I was on the agency side, I think this would be much more suited for them.

Not to mention that at 3 bucks an hour I don’t think these candidate care operators would be US located, and I don’t think having your candidate care going the way of Dell’s customer support where, despite intentions and expertise, many people talking to them simply can’t understand them because of the language barrier, would be considered by many to be a positive. The likely result I see is more calls directly to the recruiters because information wasn’t clear on the care call, and dissatisfaction not with a lack of communication, but confusing communication.

I’m not sure how much good it would do.

@ Richard: I think you can substantially get good ROI (at least through improved recruiter productivity, increased ERs resulting in lower CPR and better corporate “good will”/employer branding) through hiring $3.00 Virtual Candidate Care Assistants to make sure that each and every candidate has a professional if not actually pleasant candidate experience.
It’s funny though- I’ve not actually heard of ANY companies willing to spend $3.00/hr/head to do this…I guess CE JUST ISN’T WORTH $3.00/HR TO THEM….

Cheers,

Keith

Is there any evidence that they actually do apply again, or any evidence whether or not this leads to an eventual hire, and so a presumably a decent ROI for the time and money spent on improving candidate experience?

Keith “This Surprised Even ‘Mr Cynical’ Here” Halperin