Older jobseekers complain of ill-mannered lack of response to applications

This was one of the findings of a survey of older jobseekers, carried out by online recruitment agency SkilledPeople.com. The survey revealed it is common for job applicants to receive no acknowledgement of their submission - 70% of those surveyed said that they had received responses to only a quarter or less of their applications, and 15% of these complained that they had not had any replies at all.  

Companies should consider the knock-on effect of such behaviour. Of those surveyed, nearly nine in 10 (87%) felt badly disposed towards the companies that treated them badly, more than half (53%) said they lost respect for the companies concerned, while one in five (18%) would think twice before buying their products and 16% would go even tell as many of their friends and colleagues as possible what they thought of these companies. Nearly two in five (38%) thought that those recruiters who failed to acknowledge submissions were lacking in manners and treated applicants like second-class citizens.

David Hiddleston, managing director of SkilledPeople.com, said: "Besides being corporately ill-mannered, such cavalier treatment of applicants can seriously damage the reputation and brand of an organisation. Companies may be inundated with applications at the moment, but surely that is not an excuse to simply ignore people who have taken the trouble to put together and forward an application - and now, more than ever, it's important to maintain the good reputation of a company."

Government-funded job centres did not fare much better in this survey. Staff were described as patronising, unhelpful, disrespectful and totally failing to understand the value of experienced older workers within the workplace.