Losing a Top Candidate – Perception is The Only Reality. Lessons learned from 20 years on the front lines of the talent wars.

You rarely lose a top candidate at the end of the hiring process. It’s usually in steps taken along the way. In this case the client made a series of seemingly small mistakes that resulted in the candidate declining to go forward. It started simply by the hiring manager keeping the candidate waiting 30 minutes, then, he compounded the problem by not being prepared for the interview. “He didn’t seem to remember much about my background”, the candidate later confided in me. Despite the rocky start, the candidate returned for a series of additional interviews with other members of the management team. All went well, but the last interview was to be with a senior manager who was on a sales trip in Europe. No problem, we would arrange a phone interview. Week one resulted in no interview being arranged. It wasn’t until week two that the senior executive could “make room on his calendar” to call the candidate. The executive was 30 minutes late making the call and it lasted only 30 minutes. (Eight or nine time zones difference and he couldn’t find 30 minutes on his calendar for two weeks?) Finally, the client told me that all of the executives were very excited about the candidate and they wanted to move forward with an offer. I was told to inform the candidate that an offer would be sent to him “in a week or so”, as soon as the hiring manager could get all of the required approvals. At this point the candidate declined to continue. “To me, a hiring process is a reflection of how a company operates and makes decisions. I didn’t like what I saw.” The candidate took a job with a much larger company which had moved faster and more efficiently than this client.

Lesson learned: The best window any candidate has into the culture of an organization is the way it goes about the hiring process. If your process isn’t tight, professional, organized and strategic, top quartile candidates will go elsewhere, and they may tell their friends about their experience. One bad hiring process can equal two problems, the loss of a top candidate and a bad public relations moment.

Check your culture by downloading our Cultural Assessment. CLICK HERE to download a free assessment.

Is your hiring process effective at attracting top talent? Our 8-Point Hiring Methodology Assessment Scorecard will help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your hiring process. CLICK HERE to download a free scorecard.

Mike is the founder of Hagerthy & Co, an executive search, training and consulting firm. For information on how to arrange for their complimentary Hiring Process Assessment go to: www.hagnco.com/page13.html#HiringProcess.

Letting Employees Go Is A PR Event

Most have heard that hiring is a PR event. You should make sure that, whether you hire the person or not, they leave your company wishing they got the job. That way, they will speak highly of your company to others that might want to work there. This is especially true in small industries and communities where everybody knows everybody else.

The last thing you want is people telling future potential employees how bad the company or hiring manager was when they interviewed and that they would never work for that hiring manager or company.

Not good PR if you plan on attracting top talent to your company. In fact, a great way to ensure top talent will work for your competitors.

I don’t think some (not all) companies or managers recognize the same principles apply when laying people off or even firing them.

Well they do, and I can  demonstrate this, because I recently encountered bad PR. Twice.

First example

I was recruiting for a Regional Director of Sales in the upper northeast. Because of the weather, it isn’t easy to relocate people there.  The company was in a very niche industry, and because it was a senior level sales job, industry experience was important.

It didn’t take long before trouble set in. Did I mention the reason for the opening was that the previous person was fired? Apparently, the manner in which the person’s boss fired him was at best inappropriate and at worst down right wrong and disrespectful.

The fired employee had spread the word about his treatment all around, stating what a jerk this person was to work for and how he badly he treated people. He also took the time to go into great detail about how he was fired. Now, what I heard when I tried to recruit people was, “I’m open to talking as long as it isn’t for X company working for X?” WOW, what a way to start a search in a small industry in a small geographical area.

This all happened because the VP didn’t see firing as a PR event. The best way to fire someone is to make them think you are doing them a favor, not by degrading them, surprising them, or throwing them out of the building. This VP took a bad situation (firing someone) and made it worse by the manner in which he did it. If the VP had done it correctly, he would have still reached his goal of letting the person go, but he also could have set himself up as a person that cares and people want to work for.

Second example

I live in Orange County, California. Most people think it is part of Los Angeles. It isn’t. For such a large area, it is actually its own community. Large enough to get lost, but small enough that people get to know people. There are so many networking groups that it is literally hard to plan an event because the first thing that comes up is, you know XYZ networking group meets then. At almost any time day and night, every day of the week, some group is getting together. Some groups have attendance in the hundreds and some have less. Regardless, there are a lot and this is how people get to know people in Orange County, California.

At a recent event I noticed a lot of people were saying, “Did you hear about ABC Company and how they did the RIF?”  RIF stands for reduction in force, or in plain English laid people off.  This was the buzz while people were standing around talking before the meeting started. Apparently, some of the people that got laid off were at the meeting and telling horror stories about how the company treated the employees they let go. Many of whom had been with the company for some time.

How many other meetings do you think these people attended in the next week and started telling the same stories? Not to mention all the people at the first meeting perpetuating the stories to their network, colleagues, friends and family. We used to say, this is how rumors start. Now we say this story is going viral. It won’t be long before this company’s reputation precedes them. When the economy shifts, and they need to hire people, it will not be easy.

All because they didn’t think of letting people go as a PR event. An event that impacts the company’s reputation and how it is viewed in its industry and community.

If you found this helpful, please forward it on to others so they will be helped. You can email it to your team, forward it to your network, post on Linkedin or company Web site. Let’s help everyone build teams of top talent.

You can join our Linkedin Hiring and Retaining Top Talent group where there is a lot more information on this and many other topics. There are also discussions and on-line articles. CLICK HERE to join and participate.

Our 8 Point Hiring Process Assessment Scorecard is available to download for free. Try taking this and learning if your hiring process is designed to attract, hire and retain top talent. CLICK HERE to download your scorecard.

I welcome your thoughts, comments and questions.

Brad Remillard

Are You Ready for Your Best Talent to Start Leaving?

What would you do if your top performing subordinate left tomorrow? Would the pain be unbearable?

Do they possess your entire customer history in their head?

Would key customers follow them to a new job?

How much would productivity decline?

Would others follow  – like a domino effect?

Can you afford the costs of replacing and developing a new person in this role?

You get the general idea- it would be disastrous if one of your top performing subordinates left? Let’s go one step further – What if multiple top performing subordinates left? Perhaps, Armageddon?

What is the likelihood this might happen in the next year?

There is a tremendous pent-up demand of employees to start actively trying to see if the grass is greener somewhere else. The demand has built up to the level of boiling-over due to very few jobs being available in the last 2 years. Many candidates have felt that they are lucky just to have a job. As the economy rebounds and the job market returns (which it will – although it’s difficult to predict whether that will be in 3 months, 6 months or a year), many candidates will have an opportunity to explore whether the grass is greener somewhere else – an opportunity that has not been available for 2-3 years.

Are you Retention Proofing your company?

Do you have a systematic plan for defining roles, challenging your best people, making sure they are learning and growing, structuring non-monetary rewards and recognition, tuning up your performance management process, and improving your culture?

If you’re not working on all these areas right now, the risk is starting to increase exponentially over losing key people in the coming job market rebound.

If you’d like to see if you’re prepared to keep your best people, request our RETENTION CHECK-UP. This is a 5-10 minute conversation with one of our partners to determine what retention best practices you should be implementing right now.

Barry Deutsch

Don’t forget to join our HIRE AND RETAIN TOP TALENT LinkedIn Discussion Group to participate in the discussion around retention proofing your company to keep your very best talent.