Recruitment agencies were warned to “ignore candidate feedback at your peril” during a Recruitment Society event in London last night.

The warning followed research carried out by Jobsite RecruitRank, which found that 89 % of jobseekers believe feedback is important, 75 % of candidates place a strong emphasis on positive feedback and 85 % of jobseekers said they would be unlikely to use a recruiter again after a negative experience.

Sally Emmett, partner at Cranleigh Recruitment, said candidates should be treated with reverence and respect. Despite candidate feedback being well under 10% in the industry, sahe said: “It is about communication. At our peril will we start treating candidates as numbers. If you have a commitment to respect candidates they will offer you respect and loyalty.”

Cranleigh uses questionnaires via email, phone and text messages to update candidates on progress of jobs and getting feedback on the service.

Ian Ruddy, head of people services at O2, said customer feedback was becoming more innate in society and listening to candidates was a crucial part of strengthening recruiters’ brand values. He said: “We have set up a careers portal where we explain the whole recruitment process and more importantly a timeframe. We have found that candidates prefer to reply via a more personal text. It only takes one person to have a bad experience to give a recruiter a bad reputation. You cannot underestimate the power of word of mouth.”