Dear Barb:
I thought I was going to have a record year until two of my candidates this month went back to their last employers. I covered counteroffers during my conversations with them, so this really caught me off-guard. This represented over $50,000 in production.
My clients are both upset, and even though one was over my 90 day guarantee, the person left on the 92nd day, I felt I had to replace this candidate to keep my client.
Tom P., Biloxi, MS
Barb Responds
Dear Tom:
Anytime there is a fall-off, it is painful. With the current candidate driven marketplace and lack of top talent, you will have past employers reaching out to employees who have taken another job for two primary reasons:
- They have not been able to find a qualified replacement.
- The person they hired did not work out.
This past employer also knows your candidate better than you do. They know just what buttons to push to entice them to return to the company. The only way to counter this is to have an extremely strong follow-up process in place, after you place someone in a job. You need to contact them on a regular basis to make sure they are happy and not being wooed by their past employer.
It is also important to discuss this trend with their new employer. They need to be aware of the fact that when they hire top talent, there is tremendous competition for this individual. Their onboarding process must also include employee engagement. The more an employee becomes engaged, the less likely they are to leave.
Employee engagement and retention is going to remain the top challenges that all employers will face in the future. If you don’t have a specific follow-up process, there is no time like the present to develop one.
Barbara J. Bruno, CPC, CTS