by Silva Payne

Created on: March 28, 2010

In business, dealing with unsuitable applicants can be a difficult skill to perfect. Once you have gone through the recruitment process, interviewed your potential employees from your short list, and made your decision to appoint a new employee, you will have to also prepare and send out one or more applicant rejection letters. Knowing how to let someone down gently and offer constructive feedback is a good skill to master, and can be useful when 2 candidates were very evenly matched and you may want to offer someone an alternative role.

Many people do not receive rejection letters from the companies that they have approached for work. While sending rejection letters can become costly to the business, it should be seen as another form of company advertising. In a small town, the reputation an employer has within the community can be crucial to maintaining a motivated and committed workforce, as well as securing new contracts and business. If word gets round that a company is not interested in applicants, the applicants will begin to look elsewhere.

For the first round of rejection letters that are spawned from unsuitable resume or application form responses, a simple and short letter is all that is required. This can be in the form of a traditional paper letter through the postal system or by email if you have received applications in that format. You are simply letting the individual know that you received their application but that they have not been successful this time. Invite them to apply for future vacancies and wish them well in their efforts to secure a new position elsewhere.

Once you have interviewed potential candidates, you and they have already invested a certain amount of time into the process.  You must have thought them interesting or worthy to have invited them to interview in the first place. They may have skills that you could use in the future and so by constructing an engaging rejection letter you can leave the door open for them to approach the company again at a later date.

It is always a good idea to let them know what they did right during the interview as well as what they could have done better. They will already be feeling disappointed at not securing the job, and will almost certainly want to know how they can improve their interview techniques for future reference. If they were well turned out, confident or particularly skilled in any aptitude tests, give them credit for those points.   

You can then move on

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