"I do not have time for you, I'm not interested in you and you are an absolute waste of time to me." Although it may be true at any given time, the candidate should never read or hear this.

The feeling an applicant has from contacting a recruitment agency transmits a negative experience which can get much worse quickly and this lasts much longer in the memory. This is even worse when you are refused by a relevant candidate due to his previous negative experience.

I'll go crazy if I have to ring all rejected applicants

With the current state, it is true that most low and middle work positions have an excess number of applicants and rejecting them all personally is extremely time consuming and therefore extremely inefficient. Generally when the position has been filled, the consultant must simultaneously inform a large number of candidates in various stages of the selection process, who at this stage have no added value.

Dear Sir/Madam, we would like to inform you...

It is ideally to set some basic stages:

1. Determine the point where phone contact is still necessary and when E-mail is needed.
2. Consider whether it is necessary to respond to an unsatisfactory profile immediately or to group them together and after a certain time inform them they were unsuccessful.
3. Schedule, according to the stage of the tender, WHO will respond and save consultants' time.
4. Set a form of communication so that even if the applicant was rejected by E-mail, he/she feels that he/she had been given fair treatment with a particular consultant. Avoid awkward formulations.

How to sort it all

First we separate the candidates which require a personal telephone contact (such as candidates in the last stage in the procedure or candidates for senior positions with the potential for further mutual cooperation), a consultant must pay personal attention to these applicants. The remainder is possible to be contacted by email. It is possible for this activity to be carried out by receptionists, temporary workers or to automate the process. This will make it cheaper than if it was carried out by a consultant.

Mail client as a powerful tool

The ideal tool for effective ongoing communication is Mass Mail. Unlike conventional 'copy', the bearer is not aware of other bearers and there is also the possibility of considerable degrees of personalization. The standard is a mail template form where at the beginning and at the end are the symbols that will be replaced when reaching the address and the senders' signature. For this, I would recommend versions that are user-adjustable (for example when entering candidates into the system) because language can be very tricky and there's nothing worse than receiving an E-mail with incorrect addressing.

See example of a Mass Mail: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCV_hfcxl9g