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INDUSTRY VOICES

  • Andrea Fielding

Candidates don’t trust you…and they shouldn’t

Updated: Sep 8, 2022


World Employer Branding Day 2022 is proud to Partner with 45 industry leaders from around the world including the team at SparcStart who you will meet in Lisbon when 600 leaders from around the world come together in-person from 12-14 October 2022.


Below are some useful tips from SparcStart on why candidates don't trust you, or do they!


How often do you think candidates are scammed? And how many different employment scams do you think there are?

The sad truth is that annually, hundreds, if not thousands of candidates are victims of online fraud carried out under the guise of a job opportunity. And it is not just small company names that trap them, major corporations have their logos and brand identity hijacked all the time. An increasing number of companies are forced to put warnings on their career pages or LinkedIn to warn candidates about these scams.


Adding to this fear is the increasing automation of the application process. We all know that the recruiting market is challenging, so adding automation to the process is alluring. But it has its downsides. Candidates already faced with the warnings of scams are unsure about a job when there is no human interaction throughout the application process, even if there are no obvious red flags that it is a scam.

Recently, I talked to an employer in the distribution industry who has an impressive, and expensive, process established to reach candidates, streamline the application, conduct the assessment online and schedule an interview – completed in less than 20 minutes. It is a model of efficiency except it all falls apart when 89% of the applicants fail to show up for the interview. The completely automated process makes candidates worry that the job isn’t real. They never see a human face or hear a human voice anywhere in the process. In an environment of online scams, this opportunity feels too risky.

But it is worse than just the outright fraud and dehumanized automation. Tens of millions of candidates are presented with misleading and inaccurate job descriptions generated by a mix of intentional deception by some, and laziness by others. Once candidates get far enough in the application process to realize that the position is not what was advertised, they will dropout bringing with them a sizeable amount of mistrust that carries over to the next job they apply for.

And we wonder why candidates aren’t applying for jobs!

How do you counter the fear and go a step further to make your candidates feel connected to your company? There is a simple solution.

You engage candidates with hiring manager video. If you add just a 20-second informal video clip of the hiring manager in every job description, you begin to make the job real to the candidate. More than that, you start a personal relationship at the beginning of the candidate journey that makes your opportunity stand out. Engaging candidates on a more human level makes them feel more connected to both the job and your company.

But how do you add hiring manager video at scale?

You automate the process with SparcStart


SparcStart captures the hiring manager video, submits it for approval and automatically embeds it in the job description. It is simple, secure and scalable.


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