Some Unsolved Mysteries

 

I grew up reading Enid Blyton books and the mysteries in the famous five and secret seven books fascinated me. However there are still current work mysteries that still baffle me. Read on for more clarity.




  The last couple of years has been an employee market with hiring demand skyrocketing across certain skill sets  and the unprecedented nature of the same has created challenging situations for the talent acquisition team. Recruiters surely would have faced at least one or more situation below in their day to day operations and this is just a wake up call for us to mitigate these situations. Have you encountered any of these below mysteries? Add on in the comments section…

 The case of the missing candidate

This is the most popular category for recruiters. After careful selection and negotiation you offer and hope the candidate shows up. Thrown in pre joiner gifts , connects and any strategies you can think of but on the day of joining you will not find this person. Search high and low your person is missing. Almost a day goes in mitigating this as it's very difficult to explain why the person you spoke to last night ghosted you this morning. Try explaining that?

Kindly ensure you pass on this message informally in your network with the hope that what goes around comes around.

The curious case of counter offers

This is a common area of concern before a candidate joins. With about 90 days aka three months to join the recruiters here things like you want me to sit for interview, will you match my 656th offer? If we were to say we will not interview anyone who has a counter offer, will we have people to talk to? Think about it we might actually. This is the best counter strategy to that. If every recruiter/company can stop matching offers, your early attrition and retention is taken care of. Like any habit start slow and then see the progress.

Use your own judgement for this basis the criticality of this requirement but weigh this with the cost to rehire someone and your answer is right there.

The case of multiple candidates

This is a rare occurrence in the day of the recruiter but it happens. With virtual world playing a vital role in interview process, fake profiles are a norm and takes a bit of detective brain and comparing notes and photos and records to spot this. Of course we have come a long way in this space, but this problem surfaces up every now and then. The process post this is a nightmare when compared to the problem itself as it opens up a pandora's box.

The case of the pandemic as an excuse

This is a classic. Covid symptoms are a great way to push your joining date. Or recovery post Covid. Empathize with the positive cases, however this throws up a whole new world with 7-14 days of buffer time on top of 90 days notice period to negotiate. Of course the recruiters need to check if it's a valid case and use their judgement. But well, no one has a magic wand!

The asset and abscond case

These are again rare occasions but many a times the retrieval of assets is a painful process when you can't reach a person. Eventually it will be successful but the bandwidth wasted around this is massive. Why take the asset if you aren't planning to join?

The referral who never showed up

This is a chicken and egg problem. Recruiters constantly push for referrals as they believe that this is a sure sign of commitment. However many a times these folks don't show up and cause a flutter as again it's a hard to explain case. The reverse of recruiters not responding to referrals to is a possibility with a lot of debatable questions. 




 These are just broad examples and there are times when logic defies all of these scenarios and we are stuck with really what happened? Have we become so unethical and unprofessional in our way of life that we don't have the decency to say  we can't pick up an offer. Especially if you have been in the industry for a long time do not fall into this vicious circle of taking an organization time for a ride. Somewhere this will catch up right? After all the same recruiters will also move into other organizations where they may look at these profiles again and go Oh my GOD. It’s this person again who ghosted me last time. Then this starts all over again.

Comments

  1. DeepakOctober 12, 2022 at 8:23 PM

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  2. DeepakOctober 12, 2022 at 8:27 PM

    It's time that a formal DB is established to log such occurances and the larger recruitment firms align to build a system to not hire such low morale people. It has to start and we just keep moving on.We are a society that only understands reprimand as a solution to a problem and unless some form of formal process comes up this cancerous attitude won't go change. When candidates and employees have methods to gauge and score a employer the reverse should be possible as well. Yes this needs rules and process to be built in. It's not long before companies may start making multiple offers for the same position and take the best person who showed up. Imagine metrics being built around such outcomes in a TA process, it just shows how bad this is becoming.

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