Have you had a Heartbreak..

Now this is a very sensitive topic which most people would like it to be a secret close to heart, but Iam sure you would agree with me that most of you would have had a broken heart atleast once in a lifetime, well that what makes us more human. Either you learn from the experience, get up & move-on in life or succumb.

You may be wondering how this is aligned to the business we are into - Talent Acquisition. Ask any of my friends from the Recruitment Fraternity, Hiring Managers & Client Leaders who experience this day-in and day-out: "Candidate Joiner Renege" which is no less than a Heart-Break:)...

First let’s understand what Candidate Joiner Renege is, by now Iam sure you would have registered that this is a situation where you have an Offer Accepted Candidate who doesn't join at the last minute. Hence this becomes a very important aspect of Recruitment, as it will surely derail a lot of things within your project, like Customer Commitment, Project Start Date, Revenue Loss, losing out the project to competitors & starting the recruitment process all over again to name a few.

It’s important to understand the early signs of Candidate Renege, so that quick corrective actions can be taken to control the severity of the damage.

1. Follow-Up & Communication is the Key: Just like in any relationship open communication and interaction with your Candidates play a vital role, in understanding whether a candidate will really join the offered project/company. As TA person it’s important for you to explain the project, role, growth path & the organization vision in detail so that the candidate is able to see the bigger picture and is motivated to take that final step of decision-making.
2. Don't ignore those Early Signs: Now what are these early signs that can be your warning signals - Candidate suddenly starts acting very busy with no time to talk/respond back to your calls & messages, they are still actively looking for other opportunities, candidate has still not resigned from his existing job even after 3 Days of Offer Acceptance, he/she is not ready to share you details on Resignation Acceptance, LWD(Last working Day), KT status(Knowledge Transfer), incase of relocation no clarity or plans on the same but there will surely be few exceptions here who will be open to state their reasons for looking at more opportunities due to salary, role, location constraints which should be respected but be smart to see the difference to take corrective action.
3. Be Honest with your Clients & Hiring Managers: A lot of times we feel that personal credibility might come under threat if we talk the truth, hence avoid giving those early alerts to our Clients. But trust me on this that your Clients will always thank you for giving them the heads-up if you have assessed non-committal behavior from your candidates, to plan for the back-up candidate so that it becomes a win-win for both of you.
4. Travel the Extra-mile: They say if you truly want to succeed be prepared to travel the extra-mile, while I completely understand the stress you go through when your candidate reneges the offer after all the hard-work but preparing yourself for a failure always helps you to take the necessary precautions. Like I mentioned in my earlier article "Be Different", where I have discussed at length about going beyond the JD, here is another important lesson which I learnt along my journey is to start mapping & building your own network of candidates who are working on similar skill-sets. This not only helps you have continuous pipeline of talents but also will help you in identifying the back-up within lesser TAT thereby winning back the confidence of your clients.
5. Be Resourceful: As Recruiters most people get stuck with the checklist of daily activities and often forget how important it is to study the Market, in terms of Competitor mapping, flexibility, work culture, growth opportunities & Salary comparison of different companies working on similar projects and specific skills/role since there might a fundamental issue which could be resulting in your candidates keeping your offer as a stop-gap. Again most clients always look forward to their hiring partners to give such value added inputs, and most of the times when you give such market insights, they will be ready to participate with you to re-look at their budgets, meet the candidates over a lunch or coffee to help them understand the bigger picture, increase their branding & social media initiatives.
6. Continuous Monitoring is Important: As most of you know it takes an average of 66 days for any individual to cultivate a habit, POFU as a process needs time to mature & evolve as a practice so it’s important for you to continue the focus from Day-1 the Offer is released till the Candidate Onboard & settles down in their new role the follow-up has to be on. Now you will tell me this is easier said than done, so it’s important to define a good framework which captures all the loopholes & defines the step by step process which acts like your guide.
7. Reporting play a pivotal role: When Warren Buffet was asked how he became so successful in investing, he answered "we read hundreds and hundreds of annual reports every year. “.. I hope you would have got his message that Reports are like mirrors which capture both the right and the wrong you have done in your journey, so it’s very important for you to publish periodical reports to assess the situation & take necessary corrective actions.

Welcome to the world of Talent Management!! Incase you want to learn more about POFU for Candidate Management please write back to me on [email protected]