Ken Middleton: Thank You for Ghosting Me During Your Interview Process

Ghosting has come full circle now that it is a talent-driven market!  There is no excuse for ghosting someone on either end of the hiring spectrum. It is a vicious circle that just breeds ill will.  

Frankly, as a recruiter, company ghosting helps us to lure your best people out of your company.

 Why do companies engage in such behavior? We are going to figure that out today!

 

Today’s Quote:

Your brand is your public identity, what you're trusted for. And for your brand to endure, it has to be tested, redefined, managed and expanded as markets evolve. Brands either learn or disappear.

 Lisa Gansky

- She was the co-founder and CEO of Global Network Navigator, the first commercial website, which was acquired by America Online

 

Our guest today: Ken Middleton, DevOps Recruiter of yourdevopsrecruiter.com

 

Ken M. Middleton spent 10 years working for the largest IT staffing company in the world before deciding it was time to bet on himself. He started YOUR DevOps Recruiter to focus on connecting the best DevOps candidates to the best DevOps companies while evangelizing DevOps to the masses. 

 

One way he accomplishes this is through his YouTube channel, The Dhub Repository, in which he posts weekly DevOps career tips, rants on what bugs him about the recruiting industry, and interviews DevOps SME's on different DevOps topic, in a segment known as DevOps Defined.

 I have heard Ken rant about ghosting which is what makes him a perfect guest for today’s show!

 Today we are going to cover

• What Causes Ghosting?

• How to Stop Ghosting

 What is the problem?  

• Clients ghosting candidates.
• No feedback or super slow feedback after long extended amounts of time with no updates along the way.

 Why might companies’ ghost?

• Litigation fears
• Running too fast to pay attention
• Just lazy, inconsiderate or Arrogant …

 What are the causes?

• HR representatives being overworked with numerous positions.
• Not considering quick and timely feedback is important to the candidate experience.
• Not have a clean process in place to follow up with ALL candidates, not just the ones they want to hire.
• Not giving a sh*t about candidates who they don't want to hire and just letting it fall by the wayside b/c of a feeling of superiority and snootiness towards candidates that apply to them. (i.e. they came to us for a job, right?)

Rick’s Two Cents

• Communication

• Ghosting occurs on the company side when companies are unsure about a person.
  • Interviewers do not know the right questions to ask, how to dig so they did not gather enough evidence to make a decision.
  • The key indicator of a bad hiring process.
  • No clear structure on the information that needs to be extracted
  • Without direction, people fall back on what they know.

Side Note: Your Bad Glassdoor reviews are a recruiter's best friend… How to treat people interviewing at your company

 Solutions

• Stop having your HR representative work on so many positions at one time - Prioritize what's important...not what you MIGHT need down the road or later.
• Create an automated process to respond to applicants - There are CRM's that have this functionality where you can send multiple emails to candidates.  Avionte, what I use, is able to do this.
• Create a better follow up process for quick feedback - Schedule the feedback meeting within 24 hours of the interview. Don't let it happen by chance. It needs to be planned and everyone has to understand the importance of it.
• Create standards for feedback to all candidates and an update process/rhythm - Just because you don't have an answer doesn't mean you shouldn't communicate with your candidates. At least once a week is a good rhythm that will keep them engaged and protect your company's brand to not be a "ghoster."
• Give a sh*t - Not Just because it's the right thing to do but because it protects/helps your company's brand and ability to recruit in the future.  Understand that feedback is part of the candidate experience (some would argue the most important since primacy and recency (first and last) is often what people remember about most experiences)

 

Rick’s Process to eliminate ghosting

• Eliminate the transactional mentality
  • Protect your company brand
  • Understand the Reality of the Talent Market
• Breed the right culture
• Communication, gather feedback quickly  *** Realtime Feedback!!
• Process for quick decision making & feedback
  • Lead person monitoring the interview (founder, HR, Recruiter, Admin)
  • Build in Knock-Out questions
  • Debrief each interviewer as they exit the interview. (Max 10 minutes) - add that to the managers calendar
    • Evidence to support a “No”
  • If they dont pass the knockout, let them go

 

Key Takeaways

• Feedback (good or bad) is super important to candidates and if you want to attract the best talent and protect your company brand you need to get great at delivering this in a timely manner.
• This doesn't happen unless you make it a priority as part of your candidate experience process, and if you don't think you have a process, you actually do and I'm pretty sure it's BAD.
• We all need to CARE more.  Looking for a job is sometimes one of the hardest and most difficult times in someone's life, and we need to treat people with that in mind in relations to our interactions, as opposed to just focusing on fill another job for your company.