This article was originally published on Business Insider News.
The job search process might be brutal — Candidates are told to customize each CV and often find yourself getting silence from dozens of firms they applied to for hours.
Peter Berg, Founder Forwardconsulting firm that hires distant engineers globally for startups, wants to change that. About a month ago, Berg announced that Forward would supply data and context to each candidate after the position closes.
The company now shares details like how many people applied and got here in for interviews, what made a resume stand out, and any numbers it gleaned from the application.
Berg told Business Insider that Forward goes out of its way to not waste people’s time during the application or interview process with lengthy exams or assignments. As a company that usually recruits candidates for short-term positions, he said it’s vital to keep the experience positive and to keep in touch with candidates.
“What’s good for the candidates is ultimately good for you,” Berg said. he wrote in the post on LinkedIn. “Here’s to a better tomorrow.”
The cofounder said he decided to implement this recent protocol because the company began posting roles on LinkedIn and saw a significant increase in the variety of applications it received. Each role now receives between 200 and 2,000 applications, and the company typically sends two screened candidates to employers inside a week of the initial posting.
While sending out 2,000 rejection letters with detailed feedback could appear time-consuming, Berg said it isn’t. The company already tracks candidate data as it evaluates resumes, and an email takes 10 or quarter-hour to write and is sent out in bulk to candidates.
Berg told BI that it’s an easy fix for employers, and he believes it could make a “huge” difference for candidates — and for some, it already has.
Berg said that since implementing the recent method, the company has received about 200 responses from candidates, many of whom described how positive the experience was and how it made them feel like human beings.
One woman published on LinkedIn experience and said Forward offered her the “BEST” rejection letter. The candidate, Melissa Bashur, said the rejection email included the variety of applicants, the variety of applicants with experience in a specific industry, top locations to apply for and the average hourly rate.
She said it also provided context about what the company was looking for, how their criteria modified and how many people they talked to. Bashur said they even summarized the experience of the person they hired.
Melissa Bashur told BI that the information she received gave her a higher understanding of the current job market. It also helped her determine which positions she should apply for in the future.
“I’ve heard that things are getting better, but there’s still a lot of talent available in tech,” Bashur said. “It’s helped me shift to more positive, more productive activities and be more selective about the jobs I apply to.”
Berg said the recent protocol helps people understand what is happening in the current difficult labor market. He said the tech industry is still feeling the effects of overwork in the pandemic era and reduced enterprise capital financing.
“We know that a lot of senior leaders are looking for positions and they’re having a really hard time finding them. They’re looking for nine, 10 months,” the founder said.
He also added that individual contributors who have no experience with hiring are typically clueless about the process.
“We want to provide feedback for that reason,” Berg said. “Just to help people understand why I wasn’t chosen for the job.”