Last Summer, I worked on a job order for an outside sales rep in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. It was a home office situation as the head office is in the US. I recruited a candidate with the experience, education and personality that they were looking for. After several rounds of interview, the company made a verbal offer to the candidate and everything was smooth sailing. At the 11th hour, the hiring manager left the company and left the situation in chaos.

It took us a while to figure out who the new contact person was and the process was slow. The Candidate was promised to start in two weeks, but there was no instruction was passed to any of us regarding the job offer.

Few more weeks went by, we still heard nothing. The candidate got upset as his prospective employer because of the long process. He start to change his mind regarding his decision on joining this company. For the next two days, I listened to his rant and his anger. I tried to defend the client's action, but he just got angrier as he didn't think I was on his side. In the end, he told me that he does not want anything to do with this company any more.

That was also the end of the working relationship with this company.

Needless to say that I was upset as I lost the commission, but I tried to convince myself that I did the right thing by not talking him into taking this offer. My rational is that he wasn't happy with how he was treated by the company and the new hiring manager. In the process, I also lost respect from some of my colleagues as they think I should have tried harder to sell the company and the job to the candidate.

What do you guys think?