Is there a lack of courtesy from employers?
Would you want to work for any organisation that publicly says it doesn’t want to communicate with you?
I’m sure that this is not lost on the many of you who apply for work/tenders/jobs but how many job/person/application specs contain a line along roughly announcing, “if you do not hear from us, then you can assume that your application has not been successful?!”.
For me, this shows a basic lack of courtesy!
I can go through the process of applying for something, showing and demonstrating all the enthusiasm and relevant knowledge for wanting to work with or for an business, but that is very quickly eroded just from the few missteps in communication that the aforesaid business takes.
What’s arguably worse is any organisation who even fails to acknowledge your correspondence! A previous colleague at a former public sector funded organisation always (and rightly) said that, at worse, a client/customer email should be at least acknowledged within 24 hours and then dealt with as quickly as possible. This should be no different in the jobs/employment marketplace.
Just as a bad a faux pas, is an organisation who tells you precise dates of when they will be deciding who should be called for interview, as well as the actual date(s) when interviews are scheduled to take places, then for all those days to pass with no correspondence on the change of dates.
Equally, I’m not particularly sympathetic with the additional line, “due to the sheer number of applications we have received etc, etc” if they’re then late in acknowledging something they could clearly see coming ahead of the application deadline.
So, I am writing this blog piece having had a whole flurry of poor correspondence from various businesses and organisations.
The bottom line is I don’t think I want to work with any organisation who doesn’t communicate – what does that say to you about their own work culture if they can’t get some basic recruitment fundamentals in check!
A few tips. As an applicant, you should never have to chase but you should always request a receipt of application when you send one in.
As an employer, please plan the employment process and communicate accordingly. It is just very wrong to not have the common courtesy to acknowledge every applicant (and in good time) whether it letting them know if they have been successful or unsuccessful (no matter how many applications you receive), or that you are having to change dates or times for interview.
What do you think? Let me know on twitter @timmy666.
