OH GOD, MILDRED, THE "BUY BACK" IS BACK!

The past year having been what it has been ,there are some of those little horror shows of recruiting that faded into the mists. How long has it been since you had to handle a counter offer? In my world i haven't had one for over a year and had thus been guilty of the cardinal sin of forgetting one of the first rules of recruiting. Always cover the potential buy back before the offer!! Always!

Uh, nope i didn't do it. Rocked right on being my super star self, found the purple squirrel, sold it like a champ, got the offer on the table after 5 interviews in two cities and was happily patting myself on the back about what a cool, smooth ,studette i had turned out to be this week. In the process of telling my pals "that's the way you do this stuff" POW! An email bomb hit my inbox.

"My current company is going to match the offer, what do i do?"

Rayanne doesn't appreciate four, five and ten letter ugly words so i won't quote my expletive. When the laughter in my office died down as the rest of the crew bailed for the weekend i heard them exclaim as they drove out of site..."Go get em' Ms. Wonderful, show us how it's done, and have a good night."

It having been over a year since i have had one of these it took a few minutes for me to collect my thoughts to make the call. It's after 5:00 in my cottonwood tree 2 miles west of Jackass Flats, USA America. The good news is the SVP with my client just called to tell me that my candidate had just formally accepted.

Admittedly my eleventh hour save was not the best call i have ever made regarding a buy back because my prior prep had not been done. I think it's a good sign for the overall economy that the "buy back" is back but trust me Mildred, it was a wake up call for me that it's getting ready to be show time again and i better be back in the game with prior and proper preparation to prevent this kind of piss poor performance from happening again.

How soon we forget and how quickly we remember..don't leave out the first things you ever learned about recruiting.

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Permalink Reply by Stuart Musson on February 21, 2010 at 12:39pm

Have you thought of a "Job Offer" worksheet that covers off all the small things that we tend to forget about as we become more "seasoned" recruiters. Like you the counter offer has not been a subject of discussion in our office as early and often as it should be during the interviewing process over the past year. However by implementing the Job Offer worksheet into our process it is easy to check that question off when you have it on the candidates file as you move forward at each step.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Ceccarelli on February 25, 2010 at 2:17pm

Not to brag, but while conducting the first round phone screen with any candidate that I feel has good merit to come in and interview with my companay live, I always bring up "what if you get countered....hypothetically speaking" and most often the candidate has not even considered the scenario. It usually tells me a couple of things. One....where their head is really at. Are they really serious about making a move? And two.......where their head is really at and are they really serious about making a move!

Typically at this stage of the process, if dealing with a counter, I point out their inherent value system as a reiteration to them, and that usually gives me the fuel I need to reason with them in overcoming the counter offer obstacle. But the bottom line is this. If they are truly serious about making a move, regardless of "more money" being presented to them as a counter, they will make the move. And if they stay for something "better all of a sudden", then I really can't do much to change their mind, but only reiterate their value system and let the cards fall where they may. We all know that those who accept a counter are usually gone within one year. But even stating that fact to a candidate usually falls on deaf ears. If we have their best interest at heart (taking our offer and opportunity because it lines up with their value system that THEY divulged to us), then we have a pretty good shot at overcoming the counter offer obstacle. If we don't know their value system and what is ulitmately important to them, then we have nothing to work with other than an old sales pitch which doesn't work too well anyway because it's insincere and not authentic.

Great topic!