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It can be easy to forget that a job advert and job interview needs to sell the company to a prospective employee as well as the other way around. While you have a vacancy to fill, you’re asking someone to put their career and potential happiness in your hands, so it’s important to make sure that you do a good job of letting the best candidates know that your company is somewhere they should be working. Here we take a look at some of the top recruiter annoyances, and how you can get around them:

1. Not letting an applicant know they’ve been unsuccessful

Alright, if you have 400 applications for a job and 300 are clearly unsuitable, it might be very difficult to get back to them all without hiring a temp in. But if you can reply to as many as possible who have applied you should.

Even if the candidate has been unsuccessful this time around, you don’t want to potentially put someone off when a more suitable job becomes available.

2. Not letting an interviewee know they’ve been unsuccessful

This is far worse than not letting an anonymous jobseeker know the situation, as they’ve taken a day out of their schedule, taken the trouble to come to your place of work and potentially completed a long list of tasks for you. Not affording them the courtesy of a quick telephone call, with some brief feedback points, will certainly make them wary of applying again.

3. Being too vague in the job advert

Is it any surprise that so many jobs are seeing hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants when you consider some of the poorly written and vague adverts that do the rounds? Be as specific as you can possibly be and, if a qualification or given length of experience is essential, say so.

4. Ignoring the "preferred contact” method

It may seem like a small thing, but if a candidate has listed they’d prefer to be contacted by email, bombarding them with phone calls that go unanswered is a sure fire way to put someone off. Consider that it may be difficult for someone to talk on the phone during the day, and besides which, showing that you pay attention to details is never a bad thing.

5. Not including salary details upfront

If someone has taken a considerable amount of time putting together the perfect covering letter and CV only to discover that the "competitive” salary you mentioned is £5k less than was expected, they're unlikely to be impressed, so always be upfront as soon as you can.

6. Asking intimidating questions

Ok, so your company is a big deal and you were the number one last year – but there’s no need to lord it over a poor interviewee. Don’t deliberately ask trick questions designed to make someone look silly if they don’t get it.

You can also help put candidates at ease by smiling lots, maintaining eye contact and speaking slowly and calmly.

7. Using a "too rigorous” interview process

Interviewees tell us that they find lengthy interviews which require presentations, tests or other activities annoying, especially if little to no warning is given. You shouldn’t really expect a candidate to be able to drop everything to prepare a 20-minute presentation with 12 hours’ notice, so bear that in mind when setting tasks.

If you’re going to go through more than a first interview, it’s a good idea to explain why you think it’s necessary to have a second interview – once again allowing enough time for preparation.

Interviewees should bear in mind the words of Chris O’Connell, MD of TJ Consulting, who says of lengthy interviews: "These are fundamental to the interview process to help assess skills. A thorough, robust interview process ensures that we get the highest quality of colleagues.”

8. Overselling vacancies

As we said in the intro, someone is putting a lot on the line to come and work for your company, so if you’ve been a little less than accurate in the job description or at the interview, then chances are they won’t be sticking around for long.

Is the position a junior position? Are there a lot of 'menial' tasks? Are there opportunities for promotion in the pipeline? All these questions, and more, should be addressed at some point.

9. Not checking a CV or covering letter properly

It’s going to look a little odd if you ask "have you ever worked in retail?” to a candidate that went into length about their sales history in the application, so make sure you set yourself enough time to properly go through what you’ve got available.

That way, you can be poised to ask more relevant questions and show that you took the time to get to know the person a little bit.

10. Not researching the candidate

Just as you would be insulted if a candidate knew absolutely nothing about your company, so a candidate has a right to be if you know nothing about them.

Candidates expect to be Googled these days, and while for some all it will throw up is a LinkedIn account (which can be very handy for checking recommendations and job history), for other job sectors (for instance media) it can be an excellent way to have a look at what someone is already capable of.

A few tips on how not to wind up jobseekers:

• Do your research – there’s nothing worse than showing you haven’t even bothered to read the covering letter.
• Set the candidate at ease – try to relax yourself, maintain eye contact and keep a friendly tone of voice.
• Ask appropriate questions - avoid those designed to deliberately trip up or fluster a candidate.
• Be upfront – don’t oversell the vacancy, include salary and promotion details.
• Make courtesy calls or emails when a candidate is unsuccessful – especially after an interview, to not do so is just plain rude.

By Amy Davies for Totaljobs.com