Losing a candidate after the recruitment process can be tough. Especially if you have a long process. A lot can happen from the time they receive your offer and from when they are finished their notice period.
Here are some tips to help you stay close to a candidate during their notice period.
Key Takeaways:
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Keep your candidate interested and keep in contact with them during this period.
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Make any counter offers to their counter offers to make your offer more interesting.
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Try to figure out their other offers and see how many they are interested in.
6 Tips to Stay Close to Your Candidate During Their Notice Period
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Countering the Counter-Offer
Please understand that managers are not restricted to making a counter-offer to a team member just at the time they hand in their notice. I’ve seen it first hand when a manager has let the dust (or heat) of the actual resignation settle and half way through (say for example) the 4-week notice period has dangled a carrot too good to refuse. Your candidate accepts the counter-offer and that placement fee suddenly disappears.
Try this: Call your candidate about a week after they resign and ask them if their boss has tried to throw more money at them. If they say no, ask them if more money would now hypothetically be an incentive to stay.
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Pre-Empting the Peer Pressure
For some people, leaving a job can be quite a traumatic experience – especially if they have been at the company for many years. All the different farewell lunches, the soppy “we’re all going to miss you” cards …
One of my recruiters once had a candidate call him from her team farewell lunch to say she’d changed her mind. Whether it was staged or genuine, the candidate had succumbed to the soppiness, the hugging, and the various “remember when …” trips down corporate memory lane, and there was nothing my recruiter could do to change her mind.
Try this: Tell your candidate to be ready for an emotional guilt trip. Ask them when their farewell lunch is and jokingly say you’ll make a booking at a nearby table. And then do it if you have to!
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Beating the ‘Devil You Know’ …
Notice periods are funny things. While they certainly allow for any necessary handover to take place, they are also often just the right amount of time for your candidate to realize that things might not have really been as bad as they seemed; and that perhaps they were over reacting when they first came to see you.
Better the devil you know?
Maybe they’ll suddenly realize that they’ll miss the routine … the Monday morning meeting, the monthly birthday cake celebration in the break-out room, the quarterly team function, and of course the annual themed Christmas party.
Try this: Call your candidate every Monday afternoon during their notice period and ask them how the meeting went. If you have to, find out when the next birthday cake day is, and meet them for a drink that evening. Remind them that they are leaving to further their career, and that friends will always stay friends. They could even arrange a reunion type of quarterly function!
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“I’ve Found Something Better …”
Not quite the words any recruiter wants to hear from their candidate one week before the end of the quarter. This happened to me once many years ago and I certainly never let it happen to me again.
I foolishly believed that just because my candidate had accepted a job with my client, that this meant she would stop looking for other work. Boy was I wrong.
Try this: When you meet up with your candidate, casually say something like, “You must feel like such a free agent now that you’ve resigned. [pause] So what other exciting roles have you applied for?” and you may just catch them off guard.
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Keeping the Seagulls Away From Your Chips!
I remember my first manager teaching me that if a candidate I was working with ever called to say they had accepted a role (especially through another recruiter) that this meant I needed to speak to even more potential clients and do everything in my power to find a better offer for my candidate.
“Become the ambulance chaser”, he said.
I can share this now, but I honestly hated that pressure. So you need to picture that as soon as your candidate tells all the other recruiters she’s registered with that she’s accepted your offer, that all those other recruiters will be swarming in and going into overdrive to derail your placement.
Try this: Call the candidate and blatantly ask her how many other offers she’s had from other recruiters in the last week. And of course ask if any of them have piqued her interest.
[Or you could try this (I promise I never did this, but a colleague of mine did this a few times and (unfortunately) it worked): Get one of your colleagues to call your candidate, pretend to be from another agency, describe a similar role (offering more money) and gauge your candidate’s reaction. I can’t believe I just shared that tip … but my colleague salvaged a few placements using this shady tactic.] -
Looking Out for Light Bulb Moments
This one also happened to me many years ago. I’d been working on a really tough brief and I’d found the perfect candidate. He was feeling pretty burnt out from his current role and wanted to take a six week break before starting in the new role.
It was around Christmas time so my client was comfortable waiting. I’d spoken to him twice but he had then taken his family away on holidays for three weeks. I called him a few days after he got back.
“I was actually going to call you”, he said. “I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I’ve decided I just don’t want another demanding job. I need to be able to spend more time with my kids. I’m really sorry to be letting you down, Paul”.
Try this: I used this tactic many times after the above episode ‘robbed’ me of a huge fee. If a candidate requested to take an extended period of time off between finishing with their employer and starting in their new role, whenever I would call them or meet up with them, I’d say, “Do I need to call my client and let him know that you’ve decided to become an artist and have moved to a cabin in the woods?”
A laugh on the other end of the line was always comforting …
Keeping Candidates Engaged FAQ
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How do you close a candidate with multiple offers?
The golden rule to follow is to Always Be Closing (ABC) from the first interview to help improve the candidate satisfaction. When you first meet a candidate is when you should start working on closing a candidate. Don’t wait to make offers until it’s too late. Other ways to close top candidates with multiple offers includes:
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Shortening the hiring cycle
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Don’t lowball offers
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Find out details of their other offers to counter offer
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Have a backup plan incase things go wrong
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How do you keep a candidate engaged during notice period?
To keep a candidate engaged during notice period is to send a post-offer bunder and to communicate with the candidate on a regular basis. Make sure that you are not sending too many emails during this period because it can cause a candidate to become annoyed. Try sending a weekly newsletter to keep them engaged and invested in the company.
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How do you keep a second place candidate interested?
To keep a second place candidate interested, make sure to keep the candidate in the loop and follow up with them. Nothing loses an interest of a candidate faster than not knowing where they stand with the company. Make sure you are transparent through out the process and let them know what is going on and where they stand. This will help keep them interest in the company.
Final Thoughts
Remember that just because a candidate has resigned from their current position and has accepted a role with your client, it’s certainly not a done deal. Make sure you call your candidate at least once a week during their notice period. Maybe even grab a coffee, lunch or a drink with them if possible.
Trust me … keeping in touch and ideally sitting down with your candidate face-to-face between the day they hand in their resignation and the day they’re due to start working with your client could help prevent a recruitment catastrophe.
Author
Paul Slezak
With over two decades of experience in the recruitment and human capital industry, Paul Slezak has established himself as a transformative force in the realm of leadership and career coaching, group facilitation, and talent acquisition. His unique perspective, drawn from his early career as a leader in global recruitment firms and his entrepreneurial success with his own start-up, has enabled him to make a significant impact on leaders, teams, and organizations across the world. Paul's passion for helping others achieve success and high performance is evident in his commitment to transforming leaders and their teams at local, national, and international levels. He specializes in promoting the importance of human-centered intelligence, focusing on soft skills such as authenticity, transparency, and trust to complement business-centered acumen and drive better workplace outcomes. As an impartial facilitator, Paul brings his expertise to team offsites and strategy days, ensuring alignment on goals, values, and culture while keeping participants on task. His engaging and energetic presence, coupled with his unique "entertraining" and "edutaining" delivery style, enables him to connect with audiences both large and intimate, sharing personal and professional anecdotes that inspire and energize.
