Anti-Recruitment: Identifying Bad Hires and Offer Rejectors

 When it comes to assessing candidates, much emphasis is placed on finding the candidate who exhibits all the right skills, gets along with the team, and is at a stage in his or her career where a move to your organization makes sense. But even in a case where a candidate checks all the boxes, he or she may not be the right fit. As a recruiter, you must be vigilant enough to suss out which candidates aren’t righ t despite their qualifications, because as I’m sure many of you have found out the hard way, a perfectly skilled candidate does not automatically equal an engaged employee. When someone seems too good to be true, it’s time to deftly shift into anti-recruiter mode to suss out the hire who might not work out in the end or the one who’s going to back out at the last second.

Bad hires are enormously expensive. Beyond the damage a bad hire can do to internal projects, you have to also factor in the cost of training them, which includes the time of other team members, the morale hit employees suffer from quick churn, and the opportunity cost for not having had the proper candidate in place during the whole process. Much of this will be out of your hands, as the hiring managers and team members with more intimate understandings of the everyday rigors of the roles will make the decision, but while you’re involved, there are a handful of questions you can ask and conclusions you can draw to avoid the dreadful bad hire.

What lifestyle changes will the employee experience as a result of the new role?

Is your employee about to take on a much longer commute to work for your company? Are they relocating to a new city, perhaps even with their spouse and children? Will they be experiencing longer hours and increased responsibility? These are things that candidates often consider when weighing a job offer, but the true impact of the change isn’t felt until you’re actually dealing with it. Find a way to tactfully bring these changes up to your candidate, and they may realize they’re moving outside their comfort zone.

Have they communicated the change with relevant parties?

The two most obvious parties here are family and current employer. First, if a candidate is planning to relocate, this is a decision that affects their loved ones, and if they haven’t had this conversation, you might get all the way to an offer only to have them back out at the last minute. This ties in with the importance of getting to know your candidate not just in relation to your open req, but in terms of their personal situation, goals, and ambitions. Having these conversations not only increases candidate experience but also prevents you from getting halfway home and having a candidate back out at the last moment.

Second, be aware of the situation regarding the candidate leaving his or her company. If the person is truly talented, it’s likely his or her organization will try and keep the worker. A raise or leveraged promotion might make the candidate second guess your offer. It’s tricky to warn candidates to be prepared for their current company to fight for them, but at the very least, you can prepare to be competitive with whatever new deal their current employer counters with.

As you learn about candidates, always be brainstorming the potential hurdles they’ll have to overcome in order to accept your offer and become successful at your organization. It’s going to take some serious tact, but if you can sniff out some of these issues, you’ll end up saving yourself a great deal of time, and your company a great deal of money.