Tips for Recruiters: How to Reject Candidates Respectfully

Oftentimes, we find ourselves lingering too long into negative feelings. Some of us may be lucky enough to just forget and move on, but there are also people that can be stuck into a negative hole brought about by hurt feelings.

In the work-setting, those negative feelings may be caused by a colleague’s treatment or a conflict that happened between an employee and a manager. In the case of someone that is actively searching for jobs, it can be felt when they receive a “nasty” rejection message from the company they are applying to. There is a high risk that negative feelings that applicants experience could be spread widely and in turn harm the company’s overall hiring process.

In a discussion conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), they emphasized that an HR professional can prevent this from happening, whether they are getting hired or not, through facilitating a positive recruitment experience. It is important how an HR team handles candidate rejection because it defines your employer brand.

What should you say to those candidates that do not meet your company’s requirements? Here we give you some tips that you may find useful.

There are 2 general options to follow if you want to craft an emphatic rejection messages to unqualified applicants. The first one is a neutral, non-specific answer, and the second one is guiding with specific reasons.

The first option is pretty popular among recruiters nowadays since it takes them less time to create and prevents the possibility of the applicants to argue or counter the decision. This also helps recruiters from becoming a career counselor. For instance, the recruiters may say something like,

“Dear (applicant’s name), we appreciate your enthusiasm to apply at our company. But after a thorough examination, we regret to inform you that we cannot take you for further recruitment process. Thank you.”

Rejection messages that follow this type often tend to be short and impersonal. It also has a tendency to sound more like a “template” rather than a genuine apology. If you have tried your best yet the applicants seem to be persistent, this option lets you simply restate your response and end the conversation.

Meanwhile, the second option sounds to more considerate because it allows recruiters to play the “coaching/guardian” card towards candidates. This can make the company more appealing to other job seekers. The reasons that you may want to include can vary, depending on how much you want to be open to the candidates, as well as how much time you can allocate to create the message. For instance, you may find other recruiters write something like,

“You possess a set of technical skills that we currently need. But unfortunately, it seemed like you were not able to showcase your leadership and communication skills during our FGD session earlier.”

However, this option is also a double-edged sword. As you are being open to help them perform better in another company’s recruitment process by showing where they lack, they could use your arguments to change your mind, or worse, to file complaints related to unfairness.

Each of those two options has their own pros and cons. It is worth keeping in mind that regardless of which option you use, what’s important is that you do not keep the candidates waiting too long. That is where a lot of recruiters make a grave mistake: keeping their candidates in the dark. In order to avoid that, you may want to set expectations with your candidates. During the interview, you can say that they will be hearing from you in 3 or 5 days maximum, regardless of being accepted or not. This help them anticipate the next steps. More importantly, it would help increase your company’s reputation as an employer.

Try your best to not sugar coat by saying that there will be another opportunity in the company if there won’t be any. Be empathetic, and choose your tone wisely (you may want to try to position yourself as a candidate receiving the bad news). Overall, rejection is always that last thing anyone would like to hear.

If you are conducting a large scale recruitment, writing rejection messages may take too much time. Take advantage of HR software and tools that would allow you to automatically respond to underqualified candidates.

This article is sourced from SHRM and The HR Digest.

Kalibrr is a recruitment technology company that aims to transform how candidates find jobs and how companies hire talent. Placing the candidate experience at the center of everything it does, we continue to attract the best talent from all over, with more than 5.5 million professionals and counting. Kalibrr ultimately connects these talents to companies in search of their next generation of leaders.

The only end-to-end recruitment solutions provider in Southeast Asia, Kalibrr is headquartered in Makati, Philippines, with offices in San Francisco, California, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Established in 2012, it has served over 18,000 clients and is backed by some of the world’s most powerful start-up incubators and venture capitalists. These include Y Combinator, Omidyar Network, Patamar Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Kickstart Ventures.

For more business and recruiter advice, follow Kalibrr on Facebook and LinkedIn