Ask anyone about a bad experience with a recruiter and you will hear the same complaint: they went quiet. Not that they were rude, or wrong about the role — that the person simply stopped replying.
Communication is the part of recruitment candidates actually judge you on, because it is the part they can see. They cannot evaluate your client relationships or your market knowledge. They can absolutely tell whether you called when you said you would.
Set expectations at the first conversation
Most frustration comes from an absent timeline rather than a slow one. A candidate who knows the client takes two weeks to review is fine at day ten. A candidate told nothing is anxious by day four and gone by day twelve.
Say at the outset what happens next, roughly when, and how you will be in touch. Then, and this is the part that matters, contact them at that point even if there is no news. "Still no feedback, I am chasing again tomorrow" is a completely acceptable update. Silence is not.
How much detail should you give about a role?
More than feels comfortable. Withholding the company name, the salary range or the reason the role is open makes candidates assume the worst, and the good ones simply disengage rather than ask.
Give them enough to make a real decision:
- The actual salary range, not "competitive". If the client will not let you share it, that is worth knowing about the client.
- Why the role is open. A replacement, a new team, growth, someone leaving badly — all of it is relevant and all of it is findable anyway.
- The full process, including how many stages and whether there is a task. Candidates drop out mid-process far more often when a fourth stage appears unannounced.
- The honest downsides. Every role has them, and naming one buys credibility for everything else you say.
Rejection is where reputations are made
It is the least pleasant conversation and the one with the longest tail. A candidate rejected well tells people you were straight with them. A candidate who never heard back tells people you ghosted them, and they tell more people.
Rejecting properly is not complicated:
- 1Do it promptly. A fast no is a kindness; a slow one keeps someone from other opportunities.
- 2Give a real reason where you have one. "They went with someone with more direct payments experience" is useful. "Not the right fit" is not.
- 3Do it by phone if they interviewed, by email if they did not. Matching effort to the stage is the respectful line.
- 4Say what happens next. If you would put them forward for something else, say so and mean it.
- 5Do not soften a no into a maybe. It is the single thing candidates resent most.
Match the channel to the message
Email for anything they need to refer back to — details, times, documents. Phone for anything with emotional weight: an offer, a rejection after interview, bad news about a delay. Text or messaging for logistics only.
Delivering a rejection by email after someone spent a day interviewing reads as avoidance, whatever the wording.
Write like a person
Recruitment communication drifts into a strange formal register that helps nobody. "I wanted to reach out and touch base regarding an exciting opportunity" is longer and less clear than "I have a role I think you would be good for."
Short sentences. The point first. No adjectives doing work that facts should do. If a message would embarrass you read aloud, rewrite it.
Keep the record, not the memory
Good communication at volume is impossible from memory. Twenty live candidates means twenty timelines, and the ones that slip are always the ones you meant to get to.
Every conversation logged against the candidate, every next step with a date on it. This is unglamorous and it is the entire mechanism — the recruiters who never go quiet are not more conscientious, they just have a system that surfaces the follow-up before the candidate has to ask.
After the placement
Most communication stops at the offer. The first weeks in a new job are exactly when someone is most likely to have second thoughts, and a check-in a week in, then a month in, both protects the placement and keeps a relationship that pays off for years.
It is also when a candidate is most willing to refer someone, because you are the reason their week went well.
