For all the talk about the importance of employer brands and the difficulty in attracting talented staff, the depressing reality is that a quarter of job seekers believe that they have been badly treated by a prospective employer.
But if employers don't seem to care about job seekers, they ought to, because their attitude is damaging their reputations and their bottom line.
Because according to research by UK-based Capital Consulting, more than half (53 per cent) of job seekers will not purchase products and services from organisations that have treated them badly and almost a quarter of these vow never to purchase any product or service from the company again.
Reputation is another thing that suffers as a result of poor recruitment practices. Almost a third of unhappy job-seekers tell between three and five people about their bad experience and a further quarter tell more than six people. A very vocal one in 10 tell more than ten others, and one per cent will go as far as venting their spleen on the internet by blogging about their bad experience.
The main gripes from job seekers about the recruitment process involved a lack of communication. Half were aggrieved that no reason was given for not being offered the job and half said the lack of feedback following an interview was their main irritation.
And half of job seekers also experienced a lack of the most basic courtesy from organisation which failed to even acknowledge receipt of their application.
Another gripe was being asked irrelevant or stupid questions at interview or being put through "irrelevant" tests.
As Marisa Kacary, Marketing Director at Capital Consulting, says, such laziness on the part of employers is baffling when, as government figures have highlighted, businesses need to attract more talented workers than ever before.
The average number of job vacancies in Britain for the three months to January 2007 was 607,900 - up 7,300 on the previous quarter and up 6,200 over the year.
"Recruitment is often an overlooked opportunity to reinforce your consumer brand experience," Kacary said.
"A huge amount of money and effort is directed at delivering brand strategies to existing and potential customers, but that same attention is clearly not being carried through to current and potential employees.
"As our research shows, if you treat people poorly during the recruitment process you could lose them as customers and they are only too happy to tell others about their bad experience with your organisation too."