What happened? They seemed so interested?

When you're recruiting for Top Talent, especially in a highly competitive market (or "Candidate-driven market" as we're all calling it), its extremely important for you as part of your recruitment strategy to constantly and consistently be assessing the interest level of your Top Candidates who are actively in your Interview Pipeline - specifically, you want to be identifying gaps which might prevent your Candidate from moving forward on this opportunity with you.

Address the gaps or disconnects, and you have a higher likelihood of things going smoothly later on.

This isn't something you make educated guesses or ballpark esitmations on, and it's not something you assume either.

And it's also not something all Candidates will be forthcoming about. In the same way Recruiters and Hiring Managers can sometimes refrain from providing Candidates with completely honest feedback as to why they do not wish to move forward with them, Candidates might do this more often as well and withhold their actual doubts and concerns to avoid offending you or your Organization - particularly if they like you and don't want to risk damaging their relationship with you over the long-term!

Machang- every Recruiter, myself included, has made the mistake of THINKING they had a highly interested Candidate (or Candidates) in their Interview pipeline only to be uncertain about whether or not they want to move forward with your Offer when its decision-making time. This can be a real waste of time and effort for everyone when you've filtered down to this one Top Candidate who ultimately does not see any sense in accepting an Offer with you - and now you're back to square one in your Recruitment strategy.

As a Recruiter, this can often leave you wondering: what happened? They seemed so interested?

Look - it all boils down to taking a more proactive approach to knowing and understanding your Candidates and leaving ZERO room for making assumptions, hope, crossing fingers or any of that.?

Let's get real here for a minute - I don't know about you, as far as I am concerned, and for us at Gapstars , we need to know what our Candidates are thinking and feeling at each point of the Interview process. Understanding this allows us to determine if we should keep recruiting for other Candidates, or if there's a high likelihood that there's a great mutual fit where both parties (Hiring Team and Candidate) are happy. It also helps ensure our Clients (i.e. the Hiring Team) are not spending time and setting unrealistic expectations with the wrong Candidates.

Implement the "Post-Interview" Feedback call.

In my opinion, this is the MOST important call you need to be having with ALL your candidates. The purpose of this call is not to force or persuade your Candidates into making decisions - think of these calls more like "checking the temperature" to understand your Candidate's thoughts about the job opportunity as they move along the Interview cycle, and YES this needs to be done after each and every Interview they have with the Organization.?

A key part of conducting these conversations is that they allow you to identify any gaps which need to be brought to the surface which either yourself or the Hiring Team now has the opportunity to address - or see, as early on as possible, that there is a disconnect which would not make sense for both parties to proceed any further.

Now doing these calls does not mean simply asking your Candidates "So how did it go?" and "If an Offer was extended, would you take it?". Sorry but if that is all that your Post-Interview feedback call consists of, that is not thorough. This is an opportunity to really dig deep into the psyche of your Candidates.

Personally I have a list of several questions I go through and this is usually a 10-20 minute phone call with my Candidate post-interview to help determine where they stand and any gaps they're seeing between the role and whether they see it as an ideal career move for themselves. And I conduct these post-interview conversations after each Interview.

A few simple questions you can ask your Candidates post-Interview to identify the gap:

• What are your thoughts so far about this opportunity overall?
• What do you like the most about this role? Why?
• What do you feel is missing?

Asking this question is a key method in identifying potential gaps which exist for your Candidate which might very well prevent them from moving further along the process, seriously considering the role as a good decision, or even entertaining accepting an Offer if one was extended.?

Again, do not assume your Candidate will always bring these up themselves, as mentioned before - they might not even immediately be consciously aware of any concerns they have and might require your assistance in bringing these to the surface through asking good questions.

Good recruiting is ALWAYS proactive, NOT reactive.?

The aim here is not to necessarily "close the candidate" and "get a deal done" - the aim is to primarily have a thorough understanding of whether or not any gaps or disconnects exists which you can now address or drill down on with the assistance of anyone else involved in the Recruitment/Hiring process.

"Superhero landing! She's going to do a superhero landing!"