Why Caring is Good for Business

In any service, visibility is simple: tell people what’s happening, where they stand, and what comes next.

That sounds obvious. But it’s still the most reliable way to give people a good experience.

Lately, a lot of companies seem to be doing the opposite. Recruiters are a clear example.

Right now, it’s an employer’s market. And many recruiters are acting like it. Messages go unanswered. Applicants get ghosted. The thinking seems to be: we have the upper hand, so we don’t need to respond.

There’s no real excuse for that. Keeping people informed is easier than ever. If someone gets ignored, it’s not because the system failed. It’s because someone chose not to respond.

If you look at David Rock’s SCARF model, two basic human needs stand out here: certainty and fairness.

David Rock says people care about five things at work:

• Status — feeling respected

• Certainty — knowing what’s going on

• Autonomy — having some control

• Relatedness — feeling included

• Fairness — being treated properly

When these are missing, people feel stressed or ignored.

In hiring, ghosting kills certainty, fairness, and relatedness which is why it frustrates people so much.

That’s when the whole system starts to feel broken.

Caring fixes this.

Not in a vague, feel-good way. In a practical way.

Caring means:

• You notice when something in your process isn’t working.

• You don’t leave people hanging.

• You choose to be clear, even when it takes a bit more effort.

Right now, recruiters might feel like they don’t need to do this. But markets change. They always do.

And people remember.

They remember who treated them like a number, and who treated them like a person.

As Maya Angelou put it:

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

That applies to business more than most people think.