iscover
If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation of having a new employee drop out the day before they’re due to start, a little bit of panic is likely to ensue.
No doubt their new team was looking forward to them joining so they could either start a handover period with an outgoing staff member, or to pick up the load the team has carried while the role was unfilled.
And their new manager would have prepared for their first day, ready to onboard them and get them up to speed with the role and its responsibilities.
Forethought and relationship management
It always pays to think ahead when conducting a recruitment drive, to plan for the unexpected. If your chosen candidate drops out, you don’t want to have to start the whole process again.
Ideally, you’ll have chosen from a few top candidates, maintaining a good relationship with those who missed out on the role. If you’ve treated everyone well, and you have another candidate who you’d now like to offer the role to, you may just save yourself a lot of time and money restarting the recruitment drive from scratch.
Treating all candidates well means you kept everyone informed along the journey, you didn’t leave anyone hanging without feedback or an outcome, and you were as honest as possible with the unsuccessful candidates about why they didn’t get the role.
Learn from past recruitment drives
If you do have to start your recruitment process from the beginning again, spend some time first thinking about what went well and what didn’t during the last round. Understanding why your chosen candidate dropped out is an important part of this reflection.
Questions you may wish to ask are:
- Did my recruitment process drag on for too long?
- Were we really clear about the role and expectations?
- Were we honest and upfront about remuneration to avoid being outbid by another employer making an offer at the final hour?
- Did we stay in contact with the candidate from point-of-offer until their first day to keep them engaged with us?
Don’t leave the hiring manager and their team hanging
Talent is hard to come by so you can bet the hiring manager and their team were excited and ready to welcome their new team member - and likely they’ve already been waiting a while for the new hire to start.
So that the team doesn’t wait any longer than they need to, now is the time to pull out all the stops and think creatively about how you can find a new candidate. You could consider:
- employee referral programmes, rewarding current employees for referring new successful candidates to the organisation
- using a specialist recruitment agency if you’re not already - choosing an agency with candidates already on their books that are a good match for your role is ideal
- being innovative about where you advertise vacant roles - if you’ve tried the usual job boards, make sure you’re making the most of social media networks like LinkedIn, and specialist job boards for your role type
- reviewing past employees and past applicants to see if you already have someone in your talent database who might be suitable.
RELATED TERMS
The practice of actively seeking, locating, and employing people for a certain position or career in a corporation is known as recruitment.
Shandel McAuliffe
Shandel has recently returned to Australia after working in the UK for eight years. Shandel's experience in the UK included over three years at the CIPD in their marketing, marcomms and events teams, followed by two plus years with The Adecco Group UK&I in marketing, PR, internal comms and project management. Cementing Shandel's experience in the HR industry, she was the head of content for Cezanne HR, a full-lifecycle HR software solution, for the two years prior to her return to Australia.
Shandel has previous experience as a copy writer, proofreader and copy editor, and a keen interest in HR, leadership and psychology. She's excited to be at the helm of HR Leader as its editor, bringing new and innovative ideas to the publication's audience, drawing on her time overseas and learning from experts closer to home in Australia.
