How To Get Clients to Make Faster Decisions So You Don’t Lose Candidates

Dear Barb:

How do you force your clients to make decisions faster? I just lost two candidates who had completed final interviews because my client didn’t make a decision. Now I’m back to square one after working on this for six weeks. Don’t they realize it’s not easy for us to find these candidates?

Tim M., Alpharetta, GA

Dear Tim:

You can’t force your clients to do anything. At best, when you provide written expectations to them, you are showing them what they can expect of you. You then show them what you need from them if you are going to succeed in attracting the top talent they want to hire, always stressing the benefits to them.

Time always kills deals, but delays are often caused by one of the following:

Another issue at work is now their top priority, not this hire.
Your candidates are okay but they are still interviewing others.
Their target date to fill is a different time frame than yours.
This final person wants additional credentials not listed on your job order.
Additional referrals of candidates have delayed the process.

You can avoid most of these by doing the following when you write an order:

Obtain a specific target date to hire.
Email a copy of your job order to every person in the interviewing process to get their approval; 50% of the time our clients make changes, often, major ones.
Back fill candidates that are eliminated, and keep working the search until you close the placement.

If the position was not difficult to fill, they would not need to utilize your services. You will close more deals if you develop strong relationships with your clients based on trust. When you send in a rock star, it’s interesting how often the interview process is actually shorter than anticipated. Focus on what you can do differently to alleviate this problem in the future. If you had continued to work this search, you would not be starting from scratch; you would have additional candidates to submit.

Barbara J. Bruno, CPC, CTS