CANDIDATE MANAGEMENT

An active candidate is one who is actively on the job market and looking for a role. Passive candidates are not actively looking for their next role. Arguably that is every other candidate you might come across. Within these categories, there will be huge variations in the candidates’ motivations.

Some apparently active candidates may appear active by having loaded their details on a job board for example, but may only be looking around to see whether they are being paid enough or to make them feel wanted by a range of presenting opportunities. Some passive candidates may be seriously considering a job move but have not yet started looking and your contact comes at an opportune time.

Accessing passive candidates is appropriate and desirable when the role is of great importance to the business and it wants to ensure it is interviewing the best people with the right skills in the market, or when the role is hard to fill and there are few active candidates available. Recruiting solely from an active candidate base is a good strategy when there are multiple roles, a range of available candidates with the right background and skillsets and the role is not of strategic importance to the business.

All candidates need managing in one way or another. Sometimes this is an area of the cycle that receives scant attention, yet this lack of attention can mean a high risk to the business. For an in-house consultant or manager, the importance of talent-banking and the skill set of a contract consultant whom you are unlikely to meet before you recruit him or her, or setting up a full interview and assessment process for graduates or senior hires that you are running.

If a candidate is unsuccessful and you need to regret them, it should be done in a professional manner. The objective of rejection is always to try and manage the candidate’s self-esteem, to allow them to complete the process while still holding the recruiting organisation in high regard, and perhaps having learned something to their benefit or at the very least have found the process a valuable experience.

This is one of the more challenging parts of the recruiter’s role, particularly with candidates who go through a long process, really want the role, only to fall at the final interview stage, as some invariably will. If you are an internal recruiter, it’s good to have a standard form of interview feedback and policy on this so you can become practised at delivering it to all candidates.

A more satisfactory part of the recruitment process is managing the offer.

The objective is to create a win-win situation so that your client and candidate are both happy with the outcome. The way to do this is to manage expectations from the outset.

If you do need to ‘close’ the deal, there are a variety of ‘closes’ available of course. You can be presumptuous by offering alternative start dates, simply asking whether they are taking the role, though if you have pre-closed them none of this should be necessary. Sometimes however you might need something more sophisticated.

Once you have agreed to an offer and your candidate has accepted it verbally and received the client’s offer letter or contract, they will need to resign from their current role, which can be crucial for permanent scarce-skill staff.

Generally, when people leave jobs they do so for money if they feel significantly underpaid and undervalued. These candidates are especially vulnerable to counter-offers and need to be identified early in the process. You will also have identified when your candidate is vulnerable to counter-offers and have paid particular attention to this early in the process. Counter-offers are most prevalent in a candidate-short, professional services market where it is costly to acquire new talent, and more effective to retain what you have. Enlightened firms are taking a much longer view of retention and not just relying on counter-offer to stem the labour turnover rate in their organisations.

You will need to keep in touch with your candidates through to their start date and increasingly support their on-boarding process as well, particularly if their new company

The object of rejection is always to try to manage the candidate’s self-esteem

Anthony Kettle [email protected] or +27 21 5562313 or 0835929794