Candidate “Neglection Rejection” (or in the spirit of Valentine’s Day; let’s move this relationship forward.)

As time passes after an interview (or when a resume is known to be reviewed by a company) and there is no timely feedback given, candidates develop a defense mechanism our firm calls “Neglection Rejection”.

When the interviewing momentum stalls, the candidates start thinking of all the reasons they don’t want the job or question a company’s quality of leadership. In anticipation of being rejected, the candidate starts unconsciously rejecting the company.

Here are a couple scenarios of when there is Neglection Rejection:

At the Beginning of the Process: When a recruited candidate gives a recruiter permission to share their resume (which they just invested a few hours in updating), they expect a quick turn-around. Except for extreme cases, most everyone gets to their emails in 2-3 days. We usually see candidates getting antsy and wanting to know where things stand after 72 hours have passed. If they call the recruiter after 3-5 days and there is no feedback from the company; we see them starting to back off from the excitement they had initially. They ask themselves, “If they aren’t interested, why am I?” Furthermore, now that the resume is updated why not submit this to more companies they think…

Often times, a person’s only perception about a company is generated while interviewing. In many ways, a recruited candidate can gauge how organized a company or a manager is by how quickly they react to seeing their resume. Also, candidates get a sense of the speed of business at a company through their experience in the interview process. When there isn’t a quick turn-around, candidates start to develop negative feelings about the company, and start talking themselves out of being interested.

At the End of the Process: Well-prepared and well-intentioned candidates go into final interviews with the highest of hopes. They’ve spent many personal hours making sure they represent themselves in an accurate and professional way. The interview goes smoothly, yet at the end of the interview they learn they’ll hear back in two weeks (or worse). The candidate hears “two weeks,” understands “two weeks,” but they are unprepared to emotionally handle waiting “two weeks.” Again, as we hit the 72 hour mark after the interview, candidates start getting hungry for some form of feedback. When the recruiter and candidate hear nothing we notice candidates starting to compensate for their lack of power.

We see candidates compensate for this feeling by grasping for power. The only way they can balance the scales is to start rejecting the company or playing “hard to get” before the company neglects them.

Why Neglection Rejection matters:

1. The first reason is great companies know that candidates are people – not applicants. Great companies realize that these people gave much of themselves throughout the process and deserve timely feedback.

2. The second reason is that the best companies understand that some people’s only perception of their company was created by interviewing with them. That perception whether it be positive or negative; is going to be shared. Regardless of whether the candidate gets the job or not, the premier companies make sure the experience is pleasant. Timely feedback is a major contributor to candidates having a positive take away feeling, even if they don’t get the job.

3. The third reason companies have the best is because they won it. The top companies aren’t trying to close candidates who have been mentally rejecting them for over a week. Time allows talent to wiggle off the hook by letting doubt and competitors to creep into the picture. A steadily moving interview process with timely feedback attracts the best talent. Not only does it attract the A+ players, it wins the A+ players.

Let us know if this has happened to you and/or how your organization compresses time in the interview process.