The Notorious Non-Responsive Client/Candidate

If you are a fellow recruiter, I’m sure you have dealt with the non-responsive client or better yet candidate. Well, what do you do when you have the perfect candidate, they’ve interviewed for a position, love the client, and all of a sudden the client goes dark? You send e-mail after e-mail, leave voicemails and still… it’s continued radio silence.

Your brain starts to compile all types of excuses to why they possible cannot respond. It’s the holiday season and lots of folks take off this time of year? Maybe the hiring manager is out sick and forgot to put on an Out of Office response? Did funding get cut for this position and they are working through it on the backend?

Whatever the reason, as a recruiter, you are trying to keep your candidate warm and interested in the opportunity but day after day go by and you have yet to hear a peep.

Now what about on the other end… you have a stellar candidate and the client is ready to make a move. They want to bring them in for a final round interview, or even better extend an offer. Your blood starts flowing and after a quick celebration, you pick up the phone to share the good news with the candidate. You get their voicemail, you think “No big deal, I’ll just leave a voicemail and they will call back soon.” You send a quick follow up e-mail that you have great news and to give you a call when they have a free moment. One day goes by and you get a little anxious that you haven’t heard back. Two days go by, nothing. Now it’s Friday afternoon and the client pinged you to see if the candidate has accepted the interview invitation or offer. What do you do? You begin to cultivate reasons as to why the candidate hasn’t responded. Maybe they went out of the country and forgot to mention it to you? Are you just extremely busy and haven’t had two seconds to respond? Have they caught the flu? A ton of reasons flood your mind, but the one that you don’t want to face is that… Are they no longer interested in this opportunity? Possibly.

Magically, out of nowhere, when you have just about given up hope the client and/or candidate responds! For a moment, you’re excited, and then you say to yourself… “Wait a minute; they ignored me after multiple attempts to reach them. Can I trust them moving forward?”
You have to set expectations for future communications, both with the client and candidate. It’s a recruiter’s worst nightmare when the client and/or candidate go dark. You’ve spent countless hours and tons of effort working on this requisition and you don’t want to start from the ground floor again. Here is what I found helps out if you get caught in this situation:

1. Stress the importance of communication and set an appropriate time for response (24 hours). Communicate that both the candidate is active in their search and you don’t think there is a better match out there. Or the client is interviewing additional candidates, but is extremely interested in moving forward with them.

2. Gain respect both from the client and candidate. You are the Subject Matter Expert in your field and after years of experience, you know what you are doing. Prove yourself a trusted advisor both to the client as an SME in your field and to the candidate as a partner in their job search.

3. Evaluate the client and/or candidate. It is worth anymore of your precious time to continue stressing over this one placement or should you now change gears and move on to another client or candidate that is itching to move forward. You may spend more time trying to push and connect with a closed door than needed.

Remember, there are always going to be roadblocks. Do your best to work around them without wasting too much time and move on!

-Mandy Vitto is an Internal Recruiter at NSS RPO, a consulting firm that provides on-site and virtual recruiting professionals. Contact NSS RPO to learn about how we can help your organization meet and exceed its hiring goals.