Let’s Do A Service to Our Applicants

Let’s Do A Service to Our Applicants

HR and Recruiters, it’s time to level up. Turning silent rejections after interviews into meaningful feedback and making the hiring process a true service to every applicant.

• Respect for Applicants: Give meaningful feedback instead of silent rejections.
• Transparency Over Silence: Foster a more open and helpful hiring process to enhance candidates’ future success.
• Legal Myths: Offering respectful feedback is not a legal risk; silence is.
• The Cost of Inaction: Bad candidate experiences harm your reputation and limit talent acquisition.
• A Better Approach: Treat applicants as individuals and support them in becoming your next top performer.

After nearly three decades in HR, I’ve read more resumes than I can count. Realistically, I’ve looked at hundreds of thousands. That kind of exposure teaches you a few things. One of the clearest lessons is this: we, as HR professionals, are doing a disservice to the very people we claim to be trying to attract job applicants.

Every day, we review applications at scale. We scan, sort, reject, and occasionally move forward. Then we send a canned message that reads like a shrug. No feedback. No direction. Just “Thanks for applying.” For those who don’t make it to the next round, it’s the end of the line.

I’ve asked myself, ‘How is that okay?’

We say we’re looking for “high-potential” talent. But how can we expect people to improve or grow if we give them nothing to work with? We ghost or give empty rejections, and then scratch our heads when the same candidates apply again, no better than before. Or worse, they stop submitting applications altogether, worn down by the silence.

This isn’t just about entry-level applicants. My colleagues and I have been taking note through personal and client’s own experiences of applying for hundreds of jobs to see how the process works from the other side. We have sent thoughtful follow-ups. We have asked for feedback. We have thanked employers and recruiters for their time and asked, politely, what we could improve. We have gotten zero replies.

Not one reply.

And I know why. We hide behind legal fears. We assume that providing feedback could expose us to lawsuits. But let’s be honest: that’s mostly a myth. The lawsuits that succeed typically involve clear evidence of discrimination or systematic unfairness. Giving someone respectful, constructive feedback is not grounds for legal action. And even if legal counsel encourages caution, that doesn’t mean complete silence is the only path.

We also forget the cost of this approach. Poor candidate experiences hurt our reputation, both as HR professionals and as employers. We miss out on talent. We waste time and money filtering through a pile of reapplicants who don’t know what they’re doing wrong. We alienate people who could have been our next great hire if someone had taken 60 seconds to point them in the right direction.

It’s especially short-sighted in today’s hiring climate. Turnover is high. Younger generations are no longer tolerating poor treatment or unclear processes. The labor market is more transparent than ever, and bad candidate experiences spread quickly.

So what can we do?

We need to look at this differently. We’re not gatekeepers. We’re facilitators. We’re supposed to be helping our organizations grow through talent. That means treating applicants as people, not as numbers in a system to be dismissed and forgotten.

If we truly want to build better teams and stronger workplaces, we have to care about how people experience our process, not just who makes it to the end.

A little guidance goes a long way.

Let’s stop ghosting.

Let’s stop hiding behind bad legal advice.

Let’s start doing a real service to the people we claim to value.

We owe them that.