Life is All About Options...

[small print] from a recruitment perspective...

Now what exactly do I mean by that...

As a candidate actively looking for the next career move, I can imagine that your first call for action (with a nicely cleaned-up resume prior to this, of course) would be to go online to browse career sites that you are familiar and comfortable with, and/or targeted companies' career sites which you want to apply to. If those internal recruiters tasked to filter and screen applicants coming through are diligent enough, you would be getting pre-screening interview calls and ultimately scheduling for interviews, right? Hopefully offers too, thereafter.

And occasionally, you would also get the unexpected calls from headhunters, who upon your agreement, proceed to represent you to other companies which may not have been within your radar at all. Well, this is a good thing because this means that you have just extended your reach into areas where you would otherwise not looked at (but still are viable options for your next career move). >> Option #1 - to widen your reach.

This is where as a headhunter, we give our candidates more option(s) to make a choice. However, what baffles me is that some candidates would choose to decline interviews at the eleventh hour with "I just accepted another offer" - why is that? Why would they rob themselves of an option?? In contrast, I have also known of other candidates applying left, right and center, without getting any feedback on their applications. No pre-screening interview calls. No interviews. Zilch.

Two major potential losses from candidates' respect in so doing:

1) You already have an employment offer on hand - with both a nice starting salary and a firm start date that you are comfortable with (and by the way, the latter point on start date is a very important consideration as well - will discuss more in a next post).

• Wonder if some would say, "Yes, why bother then to attend the interview?".
• I beg to differ - I would say "Why not proceed to attend the scheduled interview and see where you will head to next?" For all you know, the job prospects and expectations may just give you the "WOW" factor and IS the your big move?
• And with a salary figure in your pocket, you know exactly what to ask for and how to set/manage expectations as well. You really have nothing to lose, but more to gain. >> Option #2 - to have better job scopes and more bargaining power for better offers.

2) You risk losing your reputation; not just with the hiring clients, but also with the headhunters. They would definitely be wary of the fact that the next time they represent you to their future clients, would you decline those interviews as well, again! >> Option 3 - losing future options.

So in conclusion, if you are ever in this situation, your best mitigation plan is to be frank with your headhunters, and speak with them. Explain the situation to them - based on their experiences on typical recruitment cycle and timeline with their clients as well as other circumstances such as your current offer has a short timeline for you to revert, etc, something amicable can be agreed upon. Guess what, I can bet you that your headhunters would know how to "manage" their clients, such that, your reputation would not be ruined with clients.

Watch out for my next post - have a good weekend ahead, y'all!

Do reach out to me if you are at a career cross-road at this point in time; I will be more than happy to assist as much as possible. Cheers.