Feedback

Applicants and candidates invest a significant amount of time when applying for roles and participating in selection processes. They may also incur financial costs associated with taking leave or travel.

Whether an applicant or a candidate is successful in subsequent stages of the process, it is worth exploring possibilities of what you can offer when facilitating feedback.

When shortlisting, you could highlight three areas in which the applicant performed the least well, and position related feedback around those areas as ideas for focusing future professional development or including more detailed examples and evidence.

You can then create a template response where these three areas can be easily ‘dropped in’ – this approach can save time where the volume of applications makes it unfeasible to give more specific feedback.

When discussing the performance of candidates who were unsuccessful at the selection stage, you could identify three areas where the candidate performed the least well, as above, and in addition you may wish to include a short statement about their performance in general.

To support all applicants, candidates and future applicants, you could identify the key skills, experience and response gaps you noted in unsuccessful individuals during a particular recruitment campaign. This could inform interested individuals’ future applications.

Giving feedback is also important for candidates you appoint as part of their induction process.

Feedback to candidates enables you to ask in turn for feedback from their perspective. The reflection time provides opportunities for further process improvements.