Treating job applicants like potential customers.

An out-of-work marketing executive in Minnesota recently made an emotional — and somewhat threatening — plea for HR departments to show more humanity towards job-hunters.

In “How About a Humane Human Resources?” author Pat Dawson reminds us that job applicants are frequently our customers and prospects as well job hunters.

You know the 15 million of us out there interviewing, applying online, waiting for that next great opportunity? Well, we’re also your customers. We’re still buying cable and cereal and insurance and wireless and shoes and most of the stuff we’ve always bought — albeit a little less often and only after checking prices at 19 locations.

Marketers have spent the last two decades obsessing over branding and brand-building. It therefore seems odd how little attention we have given to the impact of the HR department on brand reputation, especially when it comes to employee recruitment.

On the plus side, we’ve gotten used to the idea of thinking of current employees as customers. Many organizations use internal marketing practices to win employee support for the corporate mission and objectives.

But what about the much larger group of people who wanted to be part of your team but didn’t make the cut? What are they thinking about your company once they’ve been cut loose? Do they see your company — through the prism of HR — as a great organization that treats people — customers, employees, job applicants — as real people ? Do they still want to do business with you? What will they say about your company if your name comes up with neighbors, friends, or future co-workers at some other organization?

Here’s how Dawson put it –

Shouldn’t you guardians of “respect in the workplace” and “human potential” show us some love? When you don’t acknowledge our applications, when you don’t bother to tell us you’ve picked someone else, when an e-mail or call goes unreturned, when you blast out a faceless, nameless departmental e-mail to tell us “you have many fine work experiences — just not the ones we’re interested in,” it leaves a mark.

Let’s be candid: when we are flooded with job applications, many from people who are clearly not qualified and perhaps are applying only to keep their unemployment insurance, it’s easy to think of applicants in impersonal terms. However, as many marketers have learned, it’s not how we define the customer experience, but how the customer defines it. For applicants who have been turned down and feel they have been treated impersonally and carelessly, it doesn’t matter to them how short-staffed you are. The bottom line is that they feel resentful and are likely to find some way to take it out on your organization.

Here’s Dawson again:

Remember this: Most of us will work again. And when that first paycheck appears in our online account, we’ll be the elephants who never forget the journey we’ve just ended … and how we were treated at all the companies we visited along the way.

While that perspective might seem harsh, it expresses the feelings of many rejected applicants.  Here are some ideas that HR executives can use to make those feelings the exception and not the rule.

1. Establish HR branding and customer service standards. Meet with your recruitment and hiring staff and develop behavioral standards for communicating and interacting with job applicants. Make sure that your standards compliment the broader organizational branding objectives and standards. Communicate the standards to your staff and evaluate their performance during semi-annual and annual reviews.

2. Think like a marketer. As David Packard once said, “Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department.” Put another way, everyone is in marketing and that includes the Human Resources department.

The contacts we have with job applicants represent a golden opportunity to sell our organizations. Just because they have applied for a job doesn’t mean they really understand your company, its mission, goals, or its contributions to the community and other stakeholders. Through the use of links to appropriate sections of your corporate web site or a small but well-designed brochure, you can educate applicants, create goodwill and — yes — possibly win a new customer.

3. Get the right people to be the ‘face” of human resources. While we need HR staff with good technical, compliance, and number-crunching skills, those who interact directly with job applicants should be chosen with the same care we choose our customer service staff. If necessary, consider customer service training for your employment team.

4. Get personal. Even with tons of resumes and staff cutbacks it is still possible — and essential from a branding standpoint — to treat each applicant as if he or she were a potential customer. Resumes must be responded to on a timely basis– and not with a form letter but with a personal message. Job updates also must be timely and should be personalized.

Through the use of simple automation software, it is possible to do this efficiently and quickly. Just as we expect our regular customer support staff to do more with less — and maintain high brand contact standards — we should expect the same from HR.

5. Get audited. Get an outside pair of eyes to review your employment communications with the goal of making it professional, legally compliant, and customer friendly. An outside perspective can reveal areas where the language can be softened and made friendlier. If an applicant needs to be turned down — and most will — the goal is to leave them wishing they  could still be part of your company, not thankful that they aren’t.

6. Get help. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I am not great at interviewing job applicants, but I can write a fantastic letter letting applicants know the status of their application, or even smoothing the delivery of bad news, i.e. “you did not get the job.” If you don’t have the time or are a little challenged in this area, hire someone to do it for you. There are plenty of us out there willing and able to help. It won’t break your budget either, but it will go a long way towards winning new customers and advocates for your brand.

Check with your marketing and public relations departments. Let them know that you want to support the organization’s branding efforts. Ask if someone can review your communications — not from a compliance standpoint — but from a branding and customer relations perspective.

While there will always be hurt feelings and resentment from applicants who are turned down, treating applicants like potential customers and establishing HR branding standards will go along way towards making Human Resources part of the branding solution, and not a problem.