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Rejection emails with “candidate experience” surveys are becoming alarmingly common, but they risk doing more harm than good. Instead of showing care, they highlight indifference—and can deeply impact job seekers who may already be struggling. This piece argues that such practices damage employer brands and calls for recruiters to adopt a more respectful approach. A simple code of recruitment etiquette—treating applicants as humans, being transparent, avoiding ghosting, and keeping processes fair and timely—could help the industry ditch casual cruelty and rebuild integrity.
Why Candidate Rejection Emails Are Damaging Your Employer Brand
In the ‘searching for work’ world, a new trend has appeared: the rejection email that contains a link to a survey so the recipient can report their ‘candidate experience’.
I was surprised when I got the first one, from a very well known brand. Their rejection email reads, “While wecan’t [sic] provide detailed feedback...could you spare 5 minutes to share your thoughts in our shortcandidate [sic] experience survey?”
The irony is magnified because my dealings with the organisation’s branding team (admittedly a few years ago) indicated they were ultra-protective of their brand. Either the branding team has gone or they don’t know what their recruitment team is up to.
I managed to avoid responding for a few days but then devilment got the better of me and I suggested that greed on this level is the 21st Century corporate equivalent of Dante’s gluttons, which places them in the third circle of Hell.
Then another one appeared. This one was from a parent company, which probably isn’t that well known, although some of its subsidiaries are household names. That email said, “Though we won't be working together at this time, we'd like to hear about your recruitment experience. Please share your thoughts with us via this short survey.”
At what point did this casual cruelty become normalised? At what point did recruiting teams decide that it’s OK to kick people when they are down? Was there a seminar?
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked in comms for decades: I’m a fan of finding out what people think (provided the will to do something about it exists) but I am not a fan of surveys that are designed to do no more than discover SBOs (statements of the bleedin’ obvious).
The Human Cost of Bad Recruitment Practices
These emails are being sent to human beings. They are rejections. And the senders have absolutely no idea what that rejected applicant is going through.
It could be that they are in a job, were having a bad day but things have righted themselves so it doesn’t really matter. It could be they really wanted to work for you – and you’ve just put a whopping great hole in your employer brand.
But it could be that they’ve been trying to land a job for years. Yours could have been the fourth rejection email they opened that day. They could have been in their spreadsheet crossing off all the jobs they applied for where the deadline date for hearing anything has passed. They could be in despair or even suicidal.
You. Don’t. Know.
Moreover you’re proving you don’t care. You’re sending an email with a subtext of: ‘we don’t value our applicants enough to give them any feedback but we think they have nothing better to do than support our arrogance and delusions of adequacy’. And if you can’t be trusted to behave well to applicants, can you be trusted as an employer or a supplier? I’d suggest not.
A Better Recruitment Etiquette: Treat Candidates With Respect
That’s why I’m calling out the casual cruelty, which isn’t confined to a particular age group. Instead, here’s a recruiters’ etiquette guide. It’s full of SBOs; normally this would mortify me – but it appears a lot of people need reminding.
Recruiters’ Etiquette Guide:
- At all times, remember applicants are human beings. Treat them with courtesy. Imagine how you would feel if you were applying for hundreds of jobs and getting nowhere; frame your responses accordingly. Do not ghost under any circumstances.
- If the job doesn’t exist, don’t advertise it. Fishing expeditions should involve rods and nets, not job seekers’ hopes.
- If the job is going to an internal candidate then don’t advertise it externally. If your organisation’s policy says you should, rewrite the policy. It’s good to promote from within; it’s not good to waste people’s time or money. The number of long-term job hunters who overhear the internal candidate being told to ‘use the key words’ beggars belief.
- Be realistic. If you need 10 years’ experience then pay for it. If you don’t have the budget, get creative with the perks – older applicants in particular will work with you on a cash/flexibility compromise.
- If you’re using an agency, make sure they record the diversity details of applicants and ask them to provide the breakdown – that will tell you who they’re screening out. If they’re breaching the Equality Act on your behalf it might be useful to know about it.
- Keep your list of essential criteria short and the desirable criteria even shorter. You will never find anyone who ticks 25 essential criteria – job hunters will either decide it’s a fake role or you will get hundreds of speculative applications on the grounds you’re obviously not serious.
- Look at your process – if you’re having to hold a seminar to explain how to negotiate your application form is it really working? If there are seven interview stages then (with the possible exception of director-level appointments in large firms) you’re likely to see your best candidates being snapped up by someone else.
- Competency tests or assessment centres are fine; asking candidates to provide free work for you as part of the recruitment process with a view to using it without employing them is not. Even if you do subsequently employ them, remember, the copyright for that piece of work is still theirs.
- Remove out-of-date adverts. I recently got a notification for a job that was filled 14 months ago.
- Timeliness: sending out rejections three months after the successful (internal) candidate has posted about their new role on LinkedIn is not a good look.
I am aware there are exemplary recruiters out there. I am aware that there are plenty of candidates who apply for roles they shouldn’t or ghost recruiters after being made an offer. But if you’re not prepared to behave properly why should they? At the moment we’re in a behavioural death spiral. Another SBO: it needs to change. There are fewer recruiters than there are applicants.
How about ditching the casual cruelty and growing some integrity?
A final thought: Dante’s punishment for those in the third circle of Hell was being forced to lie in putrid slush while being tormented by a three-headed dog…
