Jobseeker Application Feedback

I recently sent an email to all SugarJobs Jobseekers who had applied for roles through SugarJobs - the objective was to gather feedback on what jobseekers thought of the site and whether they had managed to secure roles through the site.

Fortunately, the feedback on the use of SugarJobs as a Job Board search facility was extremely positive. Almost all jobseekers, however, were extremely disappointed that having applied for jobs directly with employers, they did not receive any feedback on their applications.

This surprised me. No feedback is a common complaint against Agencies but I naturally assumed that an employer hiring manager would respond to direct applicants. Clearly I was wrong and perhaps this is a common problem experienced by all jobseekers, whether one applies to an agency job or to an employer directly.

This creates a dilemma for me - do SugarJobs try to develop an electronic means of forcing job advertisers to respond to job applications by preventing the job from being expiring until each candidate that applied has received a response? We could set up a basic tick box selection against each applicant saying "successful" or "unsuccessful" and then an automated message is received by the jobseekers saying "congratulations" or "sorry, your application was unsuccessful". Personally, I am unsure about this - it seems so impersonal given the individual went to so much trouble to apply, but at least better than the candidate not receiving a response at all!

Another and perhaps simpler way would be to send a courtesy email reminder to all advertisers requesting that they kindly respond to all applicantions, one way or another.

My colleague suggested that SugarJobs include some "auto text" at the end of every job advertised, which states that "if you do not receive feedback on your application within 1 or 2 weeks, please assume that the application was unsuccessful" That could potentially work, but again, very impersonal and really more of an excuse.

So, how can we encourage employers to respond to all job applications? Or do we just accept as jobseekers that if we don't hear back, there was no interest?

If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear from you!


Many Thanks

Carolynne Gilbert
Managing Director
www.sugarjobs.co.uk