If you do not respect your candidates, do not talk about a skills shortage

Respect should always count for a lot in life. That applies to hiring as well. Candidates enter a selection process today with clear expectations, particularly when they got there through active sourcing or executive search. Alongside courtesy and respect, professionalism, transparency and speed weigh heavily in how candidates judge a process. Set against that, many companies still visibly lack up-to-date processes and the corresponding mindset, whether in HR or in the department itself. Anyone who ignores what candidates expect from a selection process today should not be surprised when their preferred candidates look for their professional future at a competitor.

To avoid losing suitable candidates along the way and to carry them over the finishing line, we recommend the following.

1. Structure
Selection processes have to be clearly and efficiently structured. Everyone involved should know in advance what is expected of them and when.

2. Speed
Speed matters for success just as much as quality. Candidates expect the individual steps to follow one another briskly. Longer gaps in between feed uncertainty on the candidate side and considerably increase the likelihood of a withdrawal.

3. Transparency
Information about how the selection process runs is just as important as realistic information about the position, the conditions and the company. Candidates expect clarity about which steps follow a first interview and which decision-makers are involved.

4. Meeting as equals
Every step, every interview and any psychological testing used have to be respectful, factual and comprehensible from the candidate's point of view as well. They also have to give candidates relevant information and therefore something of value for their own decision.

It should be obvious to everyone that candidates who are not actively looking for a new challenge, and who enter a process through a direct approach, do not see themselves in the applicant's role. They see the company doing the searching in it.
As executive search consultants we can say from our own experience that selection processes in which the points above are properly taken into account and convincingly lived usually do lead to a successful appointment, however often a skills shortage is invoked.