Your company needs a marketing leader so your HR team is engaged to round up the best possible candidates.  This person will provide leadership for your entire marketing group, craft your strategic marketing plan, and report directly to your CEO as part of the executive management team.  Your notice in LinkedIn draws many qualified candidates; in fact, you suspect there are some who currently earn more than your budgeted reference range.  You can only hire one of them though and you have a small staff, so you tell yourself that you don’t have time for niceties.  That means the majority of the applicants will receive your boiler-plated HR rejection letter.

Let’s take a minute to explore this story.

 

 

If you have any empathy at all you know that you’d be disappointed to receive a note like the example shown no matter what position you were applying for.  And from my added comments it’s obvious I believe that template letters are nonsensical, and in fact could be disastrous when applied to the executive level no matter the functional area (Legal, Finance, IT, Sales, HR, etc.).  To make matters worse, a few of the more socially savvy applicants took proactive steps to attempt networking with some of your senior team members.  Alas, your senior team is socially inept and they completely ignored the engagement.

 

Adding a new member to your executive management team is high risk.  Not just as it relates to the hiring of the “right” individual, but to your entire corporate brand over the course of your search.  How you and your management team treat the executive candidates and react to their social invitations could have a lasting impact on your brand that may or may not be helpful.

Just remember, many of the applicants you reject and/or ignore could end up as key executives with your suppliers, channel partners or current customers.  And what will they be thinking about your corporate brand then?