Great Recruiting - Knowing Your Offer Will Be Accepted

When we conduct recruiter training, one of the modules of the Bearing Fruit Recruiting Methodology is focused on making offers that are always accepted.  Essentially recruiting skill is all about preventing counter offers, establishing expectations at the front end of the recruitment process etc.  This module also happens to be one of the more enlightening and useful modules to the recruiters we train.  We start this section by asking a simple question  - "When you make an offer how certain are you it will be accepted?".  Asked another way, "What is the probability the offer will be accepted?"  I am routinely shocked at the utter lack of confidence recruiters and recruiting leaders have that the offers they make will be accepted.

Kris Dunn over at HR Capitalist recently wrote about Hiring Probability.  In the commentary around hiring probability he makes some excellent points but also exposes a glaring shortcoming in the skill arsenal of most recruiters and recruiting leaders.  Here is the part of the blog post that is alarming to me as a recruiting strategist:

My favorite time to get a reality check regarding hiring probability from my team?  During the offer stage and once the offer has been signed, sealed and delivered.  The reason to check hiring probability at the offer stage is obvious enough.  We're preparing to negotiate, and trying to figure out the best way to close the deal.  Lead with our best offer?  Hold something back because we think the candidate fancies themselves a negotiator?  It all depends on the situation, and we'll go a variety of directions with the offer to maximize the ultimate hiring probability.

The crazier time is when the candidate has accepted our offer, and we have everything back - the signed offer letter, background package, etc.  How could the hiring probability not be 100%?  counter-offers, guilt trips by current employers, promises to love the candidate more moving forward - they all conspire to reduce the hiring probability below 100%, even when everything is signed.

Great recruiters and great recruiting leaders don't negotiate deals after the offer has been delivered.  Negotiations, closing and preventing counter offers has to begin at the very outset of the recruiting process when the recruiting call is made and continues throughout the recruitment process.  It is the skill and competency of maintaining recruiting control throughout the recruiting process.  Great recruiters do this and, with limited exceptions, they know the offer that is made will be accepted and any counter offer won't be accepted.  In fact, great recruiters who exercise proper recruiting control can prevent a counter offer from occurring in the first place. 

The post goes on to state that a variety of directions may be tried in order to maximize the hiring probability but if a recruiter is waiting until the end of the process to work on maximizing hiring probability it is far too late. 

Great recruiters do many things to get to an offer they know will be accepted.  Here is a very brief summary of a few techniques we teach and should be a part of any recruiter, recruiting leader and corporate recruiting strategy.

1. Don't wait to the end to negotiate.  This is rule number one because if you wait until the end the candidate knows they are the finalist and you have lost the advantage.  Clarifying parts of the offer and getting agreement from a candidate before they move to the next step in the process is another way to maintain control and prevent nasty surprises at the end.  Negotiating has to happen at every step of the recruitment process.  This is an art that has to be taught and takes experience to deliver. 
2. Understand the decision making criteria a candidate will use to choose their next career opportunity at the beginning of the recruiting process (ideally at the recruiting call level).  Once the decision making criteria is established great recruiters check back in with the candidate to make sure the decision making criteria isn't shifting.  Qualify the decision making criteria at various stages of the recruitment process, notably just prior to making an offer, so you can ensure all the criteria have been met.  Extending an offer before the key decision making criteria have been addressed is asking for a declined offer.
3. Give nothing away during the recruiting process.  All too often recruiters, sometimes unknowingly, give away clues to the candidate about their position against the rest of the candidate field.  Doing this can either scare off a top notch candidate or let the candidate know they are the best candidate too soon.  The former is bad because you lose top talent.  The latter is bad because they become overconfident and leverage this into unrealistic offer expectations later. 
4. Don't close too early.  The recruitment process is a dance and every move in the recruiting of a prospect, especially a passive prospect, needs to be choreographed and well timed.  The more passive the candidate the more effort, more choreography and better timed the sequence of events has to be.  Keep in mind, every candidate becomes active at some point, after all that is part of the recruiters role to turn passive prospects into active candidates, which means the dance steps could change right in the middle of the song.  Exerting recruiter control keeps the recruiter in the drivers seat even when the change happens.
5. Eliminate the chance that a counter offer will be accepted.  Even better, eliminate the counter offer altogether.  Proper recruiter control, validating the candidate's decision making criteria, understanding and then remedying the career wound of a candidate and educating the candidate about the dangers of accepting a counter offer are all great tactics to to eliminate the likelihood a counter offer gets accepted.  How do you eliminate a counter offer altogether you ask?  Well that takes some savvy, a great relationship with your candidate and some real recruiting skill but it can be done.  While you can't control what your candidate's current employer will do you can control, along with your candidate, how much information they have.  Information is power, especially when it comes to making a counter offer, and you have to coach your candidate on how to give notice properly.  I wrote an article on this a year or so ago called It Isn't Over Until The Boss Knows and you can find some advice and coaching on this tactic in that piece.  If you do this you can eliminate the chances a counter offer will even be made.  You can't counter offer what you don't know.