Julia Briggs, the director of interim HR community Interimity, has underlined her personal belief in the importance of candidate care.

Speaking last week in a debate in the Monster Buzz series, which asked the question ‘The Candidate Experience – Does it really matter’, Briggs said that for one role she was recruiting for, she was unfortunate enough to receive 800 responses, many of which were somewhat wide of the mark.

“They honestly think they might have a chance,” she said, justifying her decision to respond to each applicant individually, to the surprise of some attendees. This included, she said, a post office worker in Sri Lanka who was as far from a qualified applicant as possible – but while some might suggest this was a waste of time, she said: “I don’t care, he’s still done it.”

One audience member compared the unsuitable applicant to someone coming into a shop with no money, no intention of buying anything and behaving inappropriately – pointing out that as the shop owner would not be obliged to be polite or accommodating to that sort of person, why should a recruiter be?

Following the event on Twitter, Lisa Scales, the co-founder of social recruitment platform Tribepad, commented that failing to respond to applicants was “totally unnecessary with today’s tech”.

• Check back online for more on the Monster Buzz event – and check out the live tweeting stream from the night via the #mbuzz hashtag.