Is The Practice of "Job Rescindments" Becoming More Common?

In a tough employment market, there are those who seek to take advantage of those looking for work.

But perhaps even more disturbing in today's employment market is when your candidate has the skills and interviews well, is offered the job, given a start date, and then you never get confirmation from your client's HR department.

The job just disappears and the offer is essentially rescinded. WTF!

Imagine the PR disaster in the making: You've presumably dealt in good faith with both the candidate and the client. The candidate may have quit another job to take the job offered -- and surely made a lot of plans and situational changes to accommodate their supposed new employer.

Now you've got one seriously P.O.'d candidate -- who has every right to drag you and the client through the mud through all those social networks they and you are connected to and perhaps into court in some circumstances.

I know, "stuff happens". And there are no winners in this scenerio. Just food for thought -- I believe that it is vitally important for recruiters to require clients to deal in good faith from the moment they get the order as well -- or assume that they can personally take the "unintended consequences" of their part in the play.

What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by pam claughton on July 23, 2009 at 6:43pm

I had one rescinded job offer back in October when the stock market tumbled. However, it was a financial firm and they rescinded it within five minutes. I got a call back that they'd jumped the gun and another signature was required and it was no longer a 'sure thing'. Next day the call came that all hires were frozen, but the client also called my candidate directly, and apologized profusely and fortunately he was holding another offer which he was able to move forward with.

I've never heard of a company just fading away and ignoring a confirmed start date. Sounds fishy to me.

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Patrick Chuna on July 23, 2009 at 8:31pm

Not sure how one can require a client company to act in good faith..written and verbal agreements can be cast aside, especially with candidates and recruiters.. after all we're like buses right? - miss one, another will come along.

Things like this happen, and it happened to me once.. I just do my damndest to make sure my candidate has more than one client of mine to interview with..the first client to move quickly and follow through wins.

Maybe the best thing to do is to find out who the final authority is on the whole deal before the "final interview", and not consider anything to be official until that person signs the offer sheet.

the above scenario reminds me of the old story about dealing with the dancing monkey, and not the organ grinder. We should always know who's calling the tune. Maybe this resulted from the recruiter doing an end run around HR, and HR is punishing everyone.. just thinking out loud.

As far as taking "unintended consequences" if my client acts in bad faith, I don't set the stage for those by positioning myself as "working exclusively for the client company"..I make no bones about being a middleman trying to help make an opportunity happen, if it's meant to happen..both sides know how hard i work for them, and as such, they've never held me responsible when one side drops the ball.

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Permalink Reply by Mat von Kroeker on July 24, 2009 at 2:01pm

Obviously, no one here has worked with City, County, State, or Federal Gov't contracts (or maybe you have, I don't know). The Rescind goes with the territory, unfortunately.

When I first started in IT recruiting many moons ago, I worked with mainly county and state reqs-- I had the same mindset as many of you that an offer was an offer-- preparing the candidate to start, etc. Ultimately, I found that it isn't up to just one or two hiring managers to make these decisions-- the position(s) need a multitude of signatures, from multitudes of departments, to approve the go-ahead for the particular project, subsequently, the position. Usually, it turned out to be an overly zealous HM who's giving the green light, thinking he/she is above the "bureaucratic red tape" and can push it through quickly. Sorry fella or missy-- WRONG!! I've seen people start, then let go after a week, just because an i wasn't dotted, t crossed, or an egomaniacal supervisor wasn't informed in the correct protocol, etc. Gov't employees are immersed in layer after layer of an "approval process", that the stars would have to allign correctly to requisition a box of pencils for the office, let alone a Project Manager position. And vacations??? Forget it-- you're not hearing back from the client for 2-6 months.

In those traumatic few experiences, I've developed a technique that works EXTREMELY well when initially communicating the realities of any position to a candidate--- THERE ARE NO GUARANTEES!!! Even with a start date-- THERE ARE NO GUARENTEES!! This is a Gov't job, you understand that, correct? If you're offered another position in the interim, Take it by all means!!-- because this is the GOVERNMENT!! And please understand also, that I can't be fielding 10 calls a day asking "Have you heard from the client?". I will call you when I hear something-- But there are NO guarantees!!! Most of them laugh and completely understand, and aren't calling 24 hrs a day.

As a matter of fact-- I have a Network Project Manager candidates folder on my desk right now, as we speak, position is with the School District, run by the County, all paperwork completed, candidate given a start date, everything ready to go, ya' think????????

Rescinded.