employees, employment, human-resourcesI have been recruiting for an non-profit organization. We are pretty small, and I get hundreds of requests. So I cant really respond back to everybody who gets selected.
We are a small company, and I don’t really have time to respond to all candidates, who dont get selected. I havent been doing that because that only increases the overhead.
I am wondering if its customary to send a rejection letter to all candidates? Or is it better to just include a statement like “If we dont respond by
The reason I am asking is because we have some stringent criteria for selection, and some candidates who were not selected are starting smear campaigns on the internet.
Is it better to repond to these individually or ignore?
You are not a target of a smear campaign, you are either miscommunication why the person was not selected or outright ignoring them, and for that you are getting criticism.
This looks especially bad because you are non-profit, by definition, public benefit organization. I believe most applicants you have are there for moral reasons, not monetary ones. So you are rewarding applicants with good intentions by quite literally ignoring them.
Take time and find a way to respond to everyone. Include a notice about the fact that you have many applicants and it takes time to process everyone, and notice about estimated time interval someone should expect for answer to take, but always follow up, no exclusions. It is as much public relations as it is common courtesy.
We are a small company, and I don’t really have time to respond to all candidates
This is no excuse. Find time, automate things if some rejections fall under blanket mismatch criteria.
Also consider using some kind of online hiring tool and weed out people that do not match your criteria there using automated tests or something similar.
On the other hand, hiring is hard. While you can use tools, they may be out of your price range. And being too busy is of course a valid excuse.
There problem is you now have a different issue, a public relations one. Be sure to respond in the channels these people are smearing you in. Something professional, sincere, but private. Ask for a direct email and apologize about their bad experience. One response is enough. Don’t give public excuses or engage in debate or discourse. Just a single reply shows that you heard them and shows other people that you care about your relationships with applicants.
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