Why is this helpful?

The interview process can be stressful for anyone.  With this automation, you will create a much better experience for candidates when they’ve been rejected by a client.  They will receive timely notifications of the status of their interview, plus additional resources to keep their job search moving along, with your firm.

  • Create a better candidate experience
  • Increase likelihood of placement with your firm

 

Deeper dive

1. Create a Bullhorn Automation list that targets candidates whose status is client rejected.

Interview Rejection Follow-up

 

2. Create a workflow in which candidates matching your list criteria above first receive an email from the recruiter informing them of the client’s decision not to move forward. See example:

Hi %FIRSTNAME%,

Thank you very much for your interest with our client, %SUBMISSIONCOMPANYNAME%.

After careful consideration the team has decided not to move forward with you as a candidate for their position, but please allow me to stay in touch while I continue to assist you in your job search.

I will be following up later this week with additional opportunities you may be interested in as well as our latest blog article highlighting 5 Top Interview Tips.

Feel free to reach out to me in the meantime if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

%OWNERFIRSTNAME%

3. Schedule a second email to go out to the rejected candidate a few days later featuring additional job opportunities as well as links to any interview or job search articles or resources your firm may have.

Hi %FIRSTNAME%,

I hope you are having a great day – I just wanted to touch base regarding your continued job search.

Please take a look at the roles below to see if anything else may be of interest or you can view more jobs on our site here.

%JOB1%

%JOB2%

%JOB3%

We’ve also recently published this article on career planning that I think you might enjoy!

I’ll give you a call here in a couple of days. Please feel free to reach out if you need anything in the meantime.

Sincerely,

%OWNERFIRSTNAME%

Bonus points

  • Update submission and/or interview status to “rejected”
  • Create a followup task for the recruiter to check in on the candidate
  • Expand the workflow to include several drip email campaigns over time, nurturing the candidate with career tips, check-ins, and reminders to search new jobs.

 

Final Thoughts

In recruiting, you never want to throw the candidate out with the interview-rejection-bathwater. Chances are, your company has many more jobs just like the one they were rejected from, and you already know the candidate is interviewing and interested.

To that end, your recruiters don’t have to go to a lot of trouble to track and followup with these candidates.  This workflow takes out the busywork, while ensuring your firm places more candidates and improves the candidate experience, leading to more referrals and redeployments.

Key metrics

  • Open rate
  • Re-engagement rate
  • Placement rate of rejected candidates
  • Placement revenue of candidates in workflow

Keeping a rejected candidate engaged and on the road to employment is what differentiates burn-and-churn firms from your firm. Rather than falling into an ATS black hole, rejected candidates are nurtured and communicated with, good and bad, so they aren’t left wondering.

Consider that candidates spend a lot of time preparing and waiting during the interview process. Give them a positive experience and improve your employment brand at the same time, keeping them (and their referrals) coming back to your firm contract after contract.