Ah, ghosting — the ubiquitous dating trend has found a new home in the hiring market.

Instead of getting your heart broken when your new beau disappears, hiring managers are finding themselves high and dry when candidates no call, no show to an interview. In this market, job seekers have the upper hand. Your team needs to play the cards right to keep applicants interested and avoid losing them to other companies.

At the slightest hint of inconvenience, applicants are withdrawing their attention, simply because they do not have to endure it. Hiring processes that are inconvenient or difficult to navigate are not doing your business any justice in 2022.

Some candidates choose to ghost businesses when they’re required to attend multiple interviews; they do this because they might have extenuating circumstances in their personal life, like arranging childcare or requesting time off their current job, that prevent them from making numerous time commitments with no guaranteed payoff. 

Conversely, candidates may find the communication process with your hiring team burdensome if your business relies on traditional methods of communication. Today’s applicants are busy and on-the-go, so sifting through inboxes is low on their priority lists.

This trend of hiring frustration is not isolated in a singular industry; in fact, 91% of employers say they have experienced candidates ghosting interviews in the last year.

The good news? About 75% of respondents still have a positive outlook towards overcoming this new hiring obstacle. That’s why Hireology has come up with this list of proactive strategies that our customers have found successful to prevent ghosting from impacting their hiring velocity.

Sell your business to potential applicants

Just like marketing your business or service is one of the most important ways to drive customers, you should be marketing your open positions to possible candidates as well. All of your job postings should live on your business’s dedicated career site.

Your career site should house more than just job descriptions, however. Use the web pages to share material that describes your work culture in more detail. For instance, you’re probably already listing all of the benefits and perks that come along with a role with your company in the job description itself, but dedicating a full page and elaborating on how your team really supports the mental and physical health of employees can go a long way in showing candidates your respect. 

You can take this a step further by using automated text messages to reinforce your values and organizational culture. Instead of researching your company themselves, you can provide links to your site in these messages, along with details on how happy your current employees are as a means of keeping their interest in the role they applied for.

When your candidate is excited about your business and genuinely wants to be a part of it, there is a far less likely chance that they will ghost you during the interview or hiring process. In fact, around 33% of employers stated that they had candidates accept roles with perks that truly matter to them over a higher-paying offer.

Pick up the pace

If your hiring process — from application to hire — takes longer than two weeks, you’re falling behind. Almost 30% of respondents in this survey said they lost candidates because their hiring process couldn’t keep up with how quickly they were extended an offer from another company. There’s no one size fits all answer when it comes to addressing pain points in your hiring process, but there are pragmatic steps you can take to ensure efficiency.

First, start by defining a clear hiring process. Be sure to include timeframes for each step in the process; something as miniscule as setting a 24 turnaround deadline for contacting applicants can make a night and day difference when it comes to keeping an applicant engaged — especially since candidates are typically applying to multiple positions at once. 

While defining your hiring process, look for opportunities to shave days off your process. By inviting applicants to fill out pre-screening tests, your hiring teams can weed out unqualified candidates or ones who don’t align with your core values automatically, without spending days manually sifting through each resume. Another way to speed up the process is to check references earlier on to avoid wasting valuable interview time on candidates who eventually won’t be a good fit. 

By having a clearly defined hiring process, along with identifying steps that may be rearranged or automated, your business will be filling open roles before you know it — all thanks to a faster, streamlined procedure.

Regroup by reorganizing

In the spirit of moving fast, there are other ways to streamline HR processes and combat candidate ghosting. If applicants can sense that there are delays behind the scenes, they’re more likely to pull away during the interview process or even accept an offer. After all, if they can see inefficiencies before they’re hired, what would it look like to work for you?

Part of this problem can be solved by defining your hiring process, as mentioned earlier. However, you can take this a step further by centralizing all of your hiring tools in one convenient location. Applicant tracking systems (ATS), like Hireology, can help you avoid double booking interviews, eliminate data errors, and better prepare interviewers for their appointments. 

When your hiring tools are all in one place, you give your hiring team time back into their day; they no longer have to switch from spreadsheet to spreadsheet or program to program to transfer important data. The time they reclaim from getting rid of manual data entry could be used to double down on recruitment efforts or spent holding more interviews.

Businesses that use ATSs to manage applicants and candidates have all of the candidates’ information at their fingertips. Whenever they need to check the status of an application, they can retrieve all candidate communications, interview notes, collected documents and more so they can make educated hiring decisions faster.

Make convenience a priority

Again, you really want to cater to your applicants if you want them to stay engaged and not ghost you. This time, you’re going to make their convenience your priority.

Your business needs to show that you respect the needs of your people — even if they haven’t been hired yet. Since the interview stage is similar to a beta run, your business needs to go above and beyond so applicants receive the best first impression possible. If your job posting isn’t mobile friendly, or doesn’t accept mobile applications, you’re losing out on a lot of top talent.

Finding ways to streamline traditionally clunky tasks, like communicating with candidates or scheduling interviews, shows you value the candidate’s time as well as your own. For instance, many of Hireology’s customers elect to communicate with candidates via text to schedule interviews and follow up compared to emails. The modern job seeker is more apt to pull out their phone and respond to a text than they are to wade through their overcrowded inboxes for an email. 

Another way to make your candidate’s convenience a priority is to streamline your interview scheduling. There are tools that allow you to predetermine availability for your hiring managers so all your candidates have to do is find an open time slot. This frees up time, for the interviewer and interviewee, as well as eliminating double booking errors to improve efficiency. When your business makes candidates feel like they, and their time, are respected, you’re already starting the hiring process on the right track — and decreasing the likelihood of getting ghosted.

Getting ghosted is never any fun. Be proactive in your search for the right employees by implementing some of these strategies to keep your candidate’s attention. To see how Hireology can help your business keep ghosting at bay, schedule a demo today!