Common things we often hear are “why would a candidate schedule an interview and not show up?”. This is happening across the board at offices who are responsible for their own staffing, and sometimes even with us. According to research, it is stated that most offices experience at least 20-50% of no-shows. Hourly positions seem to have the highest rate of no-shows.
Since we all seem to be fishing from the same small pond, reach out to candidates quickly, and be friendly. Get an interview scheduled quickly while you still have their interest.
Be flexible with your candidates in terms of being prepared to interview around their current work schedules. This may include interviewing outside of office hours and including weekends. These can be in person or virtual. If your candidate cannot do an in-person, consider doing virtual interviews. Send email calendar invites to your candidate so once they accept the interview, it stays on their calendar.
Don’t be afraid to ask some interview type questions while you are on the phone with an applicant, even prior to the interview. This will give you some insight as to who they are. You can quickly gain knowledge about the position they are looking for and the best fit within your company. You will definitely get a quick gut feeling as to whether this candidate is passively applying or possibly looking for a salary higher than you will be able to offer.
Don’t be afraid to tell job seekers up front if they do not show up for an interview, or fail to cancel an interview, that you will not consider rescheduling an interview with them. Candidates get snatched up quickly. Make sure they know how to reach you if they accept another position or change their mind about the interview.
Since interviews can be stressful for candidates, look for ways to make yours more interesting or appealing. You can schedule interviews at a coffee shop, or if at your office, give tours to show off their future workplace or work station. Stay communicating with your candidate up to the time of the interview. You may want to consider texting the candidate the day before or day of as a reminder. Also, following the interview, send a followup email stating what next steps they should expect from you.
Make sure you sell your company and all of its perks. If you haven’t done salary research recently, do it now and make sure you are offering competitive salaries. We can help you with that. Be sure to sell your benefits package. You may want to consider having something printed out so that you can give them since some things tend to be forgotten during the nervousness of the interview. During the interview, be sure to Include any career development opportunities that you have, and other nonmonetary perks such as gym memberships, drug rep lunches, or that you close early/start later on a certain day of the week.
If you are still experiencing a high rate of no-shows, reach out to those candidates and see if you can find out why. Quite possibly, they may offer you something that can be fixed on your end to prevent it happening in the future. At MPS, we are happy to take some of the headache out of this process for you by scheduling our candidates with you and doing as much of your leg work as possible.
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