It's no secret that qualified job candidates are getting harder to find in an increasing number of occupations. With key positions getting tougher to fill, every qualified applicant who drops out during the recruiting process or who goes all the way through the process only to turn down your offer represents a cost to the company. In losing a good hire, the company is losing time, money and productivity. Reckoning both direct and indirect expenses, it can cost anywhere from one-half an annual salary to twice an annual salary to replace an employee. Since costs start to accumulate before a candidate walks in the door, every applicant consumes a portion of the employee replacement cost whether hired or not. So every applicant lost or rejected represents lost resources.
by Charles R. McConnell
There's not much you can do about the applicant who turns down your offer to accept what he or she sees as a more suitable offer from another employer. Your primary concern should be those apparently suitable candidates who drop out during the recruiting process or who reject your offer to "keep looking." Why be concerned? Because these are usually the better candidates, the ones whose skills are in demand and who know they have other options.
A great hire is most likely to be lost in one of two places: the interview process itself and the follow-up that occurs -- or doesn't occur -- after the interview.
The majority of working managers don't do a great deal of interviewing, so some never become truly good at the process. However, there's a significant problem in that many managers assume an interviewing expertise they don't possess. They treat interviewing as something anyone can do without a great deal of thought.
A job candidate's first impression of the company is formed by initial contact with company representatives. The company representative having the closest and lengthiest initial contact with the candidate is the interviewing manager. If the interviewing manager does as so many do and assumes that everyone who comes to interview is desperately seeking this particular job, the candidate is likely to be treated, if only unconsciously, as a seller who has entered a buyer's market. However, it's not always a buyer's market that prevails. As noted earlier, the better candidates know they have other options.
Some of the more common practices that chase away potentially good hires during the interview process:
* Keeping the candidate waiting well past the appointed interview time for no apparent good reason and with no plausible explanation.
* An unprepared interviewer who has obviously not read the application or resume and attempts to absorb it quickly in the candidate's presence.
* An interviewer who allows non-urgent interruptions or who conducts the interview in surroundings that permit distractions and display disrespect for the privacy of the process. Disorganized, chaotic surroundings often discourage serious applicants.
* An interviewer who dominates, either by piling question upon question leaving no time for well-considered answers or by ego-tripping about himself or herself and the organization.
* Ill-considered questions that can't be reasonably addressed in a few sentences. Prominent among these is the classic opener of the ineffective interviewer, "Tell me all about yourself."
* Affording the candidate little or no time to ask questions. The potentially great hires ask the best questions, often to the extent of interviewing the interviewer (which of course any sharp candidate will be doing).
* Asking about experience and capability only, without attempting to address the candidate's motivations or trying to determine whether candidate and organization may be reasonably suited to each other.
Many of the lost hires that don't occur during the interview process happen during what is supposedly the follow-up to the interview. It's common for a candidate to be told, for example, "We'll finish interviews and make our decision soon; you'll hear in about a week," but then find that two or three weeks pass without word. Most interviewing managers consistently underestimate the time when follow-up will happen, so the candidate who places a follow-up phone call is likely to hear only, "We're still interviewing." Delayed follow-up is deadly in the recruitment process in that it's usually interpreted in one of two ways: it's assumed to mean rejection, or it's taken as a sign of disorganization within the company. In either case the better candidates are likely to pursue their other options.
Good hires are lost through ineffective interviewing and delayed follow-up, both strong indicators of the need for interviewing training for managers and "tuning up" of the recruitment process.
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