Being in search and recruitment for a while now I have met and spoken to different strange people here and there but there are some interactions that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

About a year ago we had a candidate that we were representing to one of our clients at the time. Let's call the candidate John.

After several interviews John decided not to proceed with the role (or the client decided not to proceed, I can't exactly remember).

Not wanting to let a good candidate go to waste I had picked up another similar job with one of my new clients and thought John may be suitable for the role. I spoke to John for a while to screen him and ensure he is suitable and spent even longer to describe the role to him and entice him to proceed (it really was a good role). Given we already knew John and had previously interviewed him it really was extraordinary that I spent all that time with him but John being picky, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

I had asked John if he had already been represented to our client (I had given him the company name etc) and he told me since he is a passive candidate he has only ever spoken to our agency and that he has not been represented. So at the end of our discussion I sent John an email with the job description asking him to write me a written consent to represent him.

Low and behold John goes home and writes back that he now remembers that another agency (lets call them commission R us) had called John 2 weeks ago. In a quick conversation (talk about the quality of the call) they had told him that company XYZ (my client) had a role in his area and asked if he is interested. John had promptly replied no and the conevrsation ended there.

Now get ready for the bomb. John wrote to me that since commission R us had contacted him 2 weeks ago it is the right thing to apply through them and that he was going to call their agent tomorrow to ask the agent to represent him.

I wrote to John explaining that first of all I had mentioned the name of the company to him so I was honest to begin with and secondly, and more importantly, I understood the role, ensured he was suitable, explained the role to him in details and made him interested, and also knew how to best represent him. Commission R us had not done any of those.

John replied he has made his mind and asked me not to contact him. I later found out that the role was filled and John was the candidate they picked.

I think I was reasonable in the way I dealt with John but I am interested to know how differently other people may have reacted to this situation.