Each and every time I am presented with an opportunity to begin a new candidate search for an agency, I tell the person I’m working with one very important thing: “The more specific and more immediate feedback you can give me, the better.”

Over the course of the past three weeks, I have been submitting candidates to a particular shop with no acknowledgment at all. I wasn’t even sure my emails were going through. This brings me to my first request:

When you receive the resume, please let me know you did and when you’ll be getting back to me on next steps.

“Thanks for John’s resume. I will pass it onto Fred, but Fred is out of the office until Thursday so I should be getting back to you on Monday.”

See how that works? That way, the candidate and I don’t wonder why no one is emailing or calling on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.

My second request:

If the process is waiting on someone or some event, let me know.

“Fred has been playing catch-up today but has promised to take a look tonight. I will email you tomorrow with next steps.”

And finally, the most important one of all:

If you DON’T like a candidate for any reason, you must let me know why. You must be specific.

After not hearing one word and then sending several emails following up on the six candidates I had submitted, here’s what I got back:

“Hi Shannon -

Thanks!”

Uh… really? Are you serious?

What this sort of response ensures is that they will be getting six candidates exactly like the six they weren’t interested in. What a waste of everyone’s time.

Instead, some specific feedback would allow me to fine-tune my search and really submit the best, most qualified candidates for this position. Until I get that, there’s really no sense in moving forward.

[tags]candidate, agency, hiring manager, feedback, hiring revolution[/tags]