Sending a formal rejection notice to candidates is an important step in the interview process. Building a habit of consistently and clearly notifying candidates upon rejection builds a positive reputation for your brand and can help you attract potential employees in the future. Guide rejection tools help reduce the fiction of this difficult but necessary step.
Rejecting a candidate
First, it’s important to call out that Guide does not replace the rejection pipeline features of Greenhouse. You are still encouraged to move your candidates through stages of their interview process in Greenhouse, including using Greenhouse to flag a candidate as hired or rejected. Consider Guide a companion to this workflow.
Once you have decided to reject a candidate, it is best practice to mark that candidate’s status in Guide as rejected and send them a message notifying them that they are no longer being considered for the role. Here’s how:
You have two locations from which you can reject a candidate with Guide.
Option 1: From the Guide button at the top of candidate Greenhouse profiles, locate and click Notify of rejection in the dropdown menu. Skip ahead to step #3.
Option 2: From the candidate tab in the Guide Extension, locate and click the candidate status button and click Rejected in the dropdown menu.
You will be prompted to send the candidate a message notifying them of the rejection. Click Reject and notify. If you’d like to simply mark the candidate Rejected and not send them a message, click Reject without notifying.
In the dialog that appears, you will see a small badge next to the candidate’s stage, indicating that their status is changing to Rejected. From here, you’re invited to write a message to share with your candidate. You can also use a rejection template from the template dropdown menu in the header options of this dialog (see: Using message templates).
Once you are happy with your message, click Reject and notify.
[Gif: Reject and notify a candidate]
What happens after I reject a candidate?
If you wrote a message to accompany your notice of rejection, Guide will email the candidate’s inbox on your behalf. From this message, the candidate can click to return to their guide.
When a rejected candidate visits their guide, they will see a persistent grey banner anchored at the top of the page, letting them know their interview process has ended. Their interview plan and all other content will be frozen in place.
Undo a candidate's rejection
Occasionally, you may need to revert your decision to reject a candidate. Not a problem. From the candidate tab in the Guide Extension, locate and click the candidate status button and select from the available options (e.g., Interviewing or Hired).
If, for some reason, you would also like to delete the original rejection message, follow these steps:
Navigate to the candidate’s guide. You can always find a direct link to the candidate guide from the candidate tab in the Guide Extension.
Click Messages at the top of the page.
Locate the message. From the message, open the message options menu located behind the ... button.
Click Delete.