Few people talk about it out loud, but it happens, we know it, Agencies know it, and here is a tip on how to avoid it.

Seems simple enough. You spend hours trying to get people interested, they apply and then 4 other corporate recruiters tag them. By the Way these recruiters are all working on your team.

How about this one. You speak with a candidate, get her jazzed about a leader position in a niche area of development, and bam....They have an interview tomorrow with another department of your corporation,

You asked the candidate Are you speaking with anyone else at the moment? Have you spoken to our company in the past, or are you considering another position with us? No No No....but yet the next day someone calls you to say they have been in process with the candidate and ordered an interview.

Or you spend all night speaking with a candidate, building them up and the next day you enter the candidate, and send to the manager, and suddenly an employee referral that comes in that looks too familiar,

Does this sound like A HUGE Company with a Complex Hiring Structure?? Well it happens in those large companies, but it also happens in small dynamic and process driven companies. Why--because we are human, our candidates are human (well except for the Chimp recruited for NASA), and our systems sometimes are inhuman. This isn't about Ethics, this is a systematic and process issue.

How can we avoid it? There are several ways...but none so simple as the Check Check. The Check Check works for large, small, electronically savvy, and not so savvy recruitment organizations. You make a check or assign a review either electronically or humanly with all points, stakeholders and system. You plan for possible duplicant entries, by assigning all candidates requirements. ie.) an email address and a middle initial and a company name and a word search option. You check for the candidate name, the employees they know, the systems they at one time could have applied to, and check part of every point of entry. If you have one of those savvy, complex ATS's then you have a leg up...Just remember to Check Again.

The other Check is what I call the "What if but not for" , and "lets Check on How to Share" Its up to the recruiter to do once a Discrepancy or unnatural collision happens. If I wouldn't have gotten this candidate if it weren't for an agency for this req then I give the Agency credit, if the candidate truly was sourced, and someone beat you to the entering, than Check with the Candidate...Trust, Ethics and Good hearted Competition will only inspire you to Check upon Entry and Check beyond Exit. The Candidate should have a say in what is good for the candidate as well as the corporation. So plan ahead, you are recruiting for all the corporation not just one role, or one team...that is unless you have one role and one employee team;-)