Nov 17, 2016
Welcome back to my blog that focuses on my experience as a recruiter, specifically the analytics market. Today is a short piece but one that should resonate with a few people and others may look at it in disbelief. Recruitment is a tough gig at the best of times, your product that you must sell and trust and believe in is not an inanimate object and can, in fact, change their mind, lie, be deceitful and sometimes shock you. This can work both ways and often people will do something that is a pleasant surprise, unfortunately, today’s blog is not about that. Here is how not to get ahead with recruiters and generally how you should not work with people.
The day is a fine Monday morning; the sun is shining as it does often in Sydney. A client rings in a role, always a bonus on a Monday morning, negating the 10 marketing calls that were about to happen. An urgent contract requirement for a new project that was going to begin within the week. Candidates are called, covered off and closed; CV’s are sent and all parties are happy. After interviewing, a suitable candidate is found and they are happy to accept, what happened next was not acceptable and a strange practice.
The manager for this role is excited as she has a candidate suitable and ready to go immediately. The recruitment consultant is excited as the job has been filled quickly and effectively. The candidate is also happy, securing a position with a good daily rate, they come into the office and sign all paperwork, the consultants scan their ID and the candidate expresses how excited they are.
Then everything changed. A day later the candidate sends the following email to the recruiter:
I got an offer from another company and decided to go with that role. Please ignore my application with …………
Now we have 2 issues here, the recruiter takes the weight of this and should have been more careful in the closing process. However, the candidate has no regard for the signatures they have put on paper and the commitments they gave to the client and recruiter. In addition, the candidate then refuses to answer calls, emails and any sort of correspondence from the recruiter. So what should we take away from this?
- Always keep a good relationship with recruiters and clients you never know when you may meet them/need them again in the future
- Do not sign a contract unless you are actually fully committed to a role, an out there and blatant disregard for how this affects others does not look good
- The client then had to push back the start date of the project creating more issues for the business
- Have the gumption to stand up for your decisions and don’t decide you cannot face the recruiter to discuss why this has happened
- Consider the relationship the recruiter has with the client and how you may affect this
- It is not a crime to change your mind/something may change in your situation that may stop you taking a role, however, front up to this and work with the recruiter through this, they will often understand
- Do not lie when a recruiter asks if you are interviewing elsewhere and do not think playing roles off each other is a good way to go
Simply put this small but significant episode affected a large number of people and businesses. The relationship between all parties becomes strained and most importantly the client is not able to get a project started because of this. Before decisions are made all full assessment on the situation should be made and also discussed with the recruiter. Unfortunately this time the email was the only correspondence. The recruiter will not use the candidate again and it is a given that the company they were to start with will not be singing their praises in the marketplace. However, 99% of people/candidates are not like this so 1 in 100 isn’t too bad I guess!
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