When great candidates make bad hires

We have all been there:

You have spent too long trying to fill a key position. At long last, someone emerges who appears to be an ideal fit. You are certain that she meets all of the technical qualifications. She has spent her career with an industry leader in your space where she gained ideal experience. She presents as very intelligent, capable and even has a sense of humour. She seems genuinely excited about all aspects of the business and is very happy with how you describe the organization. She speaks with joy about how the role seems to be a perfect fit with very little discussion required. You sense that you are about to add a critical person. At last you can move on to whatever fresh hell is next on your list. Six to ten months later you are devastated to hear that your star candidate is leaving. What could have happened?

This phenomenon is also very visible from the other side of the spectrum. In the recruitment world you see a million resumes, and one of the biggest trends is that of people who spent a long time in one company suddenly having one or two short stints to follow it up. Also, people who go through difficult times, or spend stretches unemployed often have very short stays in one organization before moving on. It is something I tell to every person I speak with that has been part of a restructuring.

Sometimes the most dangerous candidates are very impressive people who, for whatever reason, are not actually a fit in your specific organization. Moreover, this lack of what we all tend to call “culture fit” is not spotted in the assessment process, because many candidates will view your opportunity with rose-coloured glasses and focus on pleasing you rather than assessing things objectively. They are not truly running to your job, they are running away from another situation, be it loss of identity due to unemployment, a true dislike for their current employment situation, or the simple need for feeling valued at a difficult time. Their short term motivations cloud their ability to properly focus and assess your role, but their skills and capabilities are still very evident.

It is very dangerous to fall for a seemingly perfect candidate when he or she is, professionally speaking, on the rebound.

There are lots of clues to help spot this scenario:

Has the person asked specific questions about the heart of the role?

Has he or she avoided the tougher issues that might cause problems like mandate, jurisdiction, current challenges or why others have not been successful?

Has this person spent time contrasting aloud how your organization (or client) differs from where this person would be leaving, almost appearing anxious to make a positive distinction?

Did the person cave too easily in negotiations?

Has this person truly made it clear what drives him or her most? If so, are you sure this is a key part of the role being interviewed for?

As a recruitment professional, it is sometimes difficult to accept that, after spending so much time hunting for a needle in a haystack, the next step is to scrutinize the short term motivations of our prize find, risking the individual’s candidacy. In the end, nobody benefits from a poor match, least of all the candidate.

Having said all of this, I am certainly not proposing that you eliminate candidates simply because they fit the above criteria. Being “on the rebound” professionally is quite different from its romantic counterpart. I believe strongly that the solution is just being more thorough and direct. Before you hire anyone include these questions among your final considerations:

Do I fully understand what is motivating this person right now, and what will motivate them in the longer term?

Am I certain this person is running to the opportunity and not running from something else?

In my experience this scenario arises fairly often, and there really is no need to play psychologist. When I am not sure, I sit down with candidates and explain to them my concern and talk it through with them. (Many who I have worked with will recall this conversation in various forms.) Recruiting at its highest level is not about selling, it is about finding ideal partnerships that benefit everyone. Sometimes a conversation like this gives the candidate pause to really review in a deeper context the potential fit, which may in turn lead to better questions and better expectations on both ends leading up to a start date.

Other times you find out that, after finally thinking you have found the right person, you simply haven’t and you must start again.

If it was easy it wouldn’t be fun.

Comment by Tim Spagnola on April 11, 2012 at 6:25am: I agree with Maisha in that this was a solid post. Thanks for sharing this Mark.

Comment by Darryl Dioso on April 11, 2012 at 10:01am: Six to ten months they leave? At that point, as a recruiter I have done my job and the hiring company needs to shoulder quite a bit of the blame. When I had candidates leave a client at that point, often the feedback is that the company and its managers were not supportive nor did they deliver what was promised.

Comment by Mark Nelson on April 11, 2012 at 10:57am: Thanks for your comments everyone. I am really enjoying the forum and it is great to communicate with other professionals.

Daryl - I understand your point and often it is beyond the recruiter's control. I do think there are cases (as above) where the recruiter can help a client more by moving beyond a "just get the hire" mentaility and focusing on greater fit and a happier client down the road. I see that as an oppourtunity to build deeper and longer relationships.

I suppose some of it depends on the individual client relationship.

Comment by Elise Reynolds on April 11, 2012 at 11:56am: Much of it is outside of our control as recruiters. Also, our clients are often desperate to hire someone with the skills and abilities they need so they are not going to look too closely at the red flags of someone running away instead of running TO them.

I do think as recruiters we need to do our best to help our candidates and employers make the best decisions that will help grow their business or careers. What I try to do is talk very candidly to candidates about how important their choices are, how they already know how miserable it is to make the wrong employment choice. How they have great skills and are going to be in demand so they can afford to choose wisely and carefully. I try to dig into their reasons for leaving and what they really want. I don't sugar coat anything about the employer.

Basically I appeal to their sense of professional pride.

I think one of the main reasons people leave after a short stint is because the business situation at their employer changed significantly from when they were hired. Business that the employer thought they all but "had in the bag" at the point they hired this expert did not materialize as planned. Or part of the business was sold off or a unforseen shift in the industry. All of a sudden you have a candidate who changed jobs to do a particular kind of work and now is not able to do that work or at least not to the level that they had expected.

Comment by Simon Trigg on April 11, 2012 at 11:58am: Mark,

Excellent post - thanks for sharing.

Your comment: "Sometimes the most dangerous candidates are very impressive people who, for whatever reason, are not actually a fit in your specific organisation," strikes home hard - several companies I was working with in Australia used the Onetest Values Inventory psych test to successfully match up the culture fit between the client and the candidate to avoid just this sort of issue. It invariably identifies those that are a great fit with the Client organisation's culture, especially at senior levels, but also identifies (very quickly) those that are not, even when they "view your opportunity with rose-coloured glasses and focus on pleasing you rather than assessing things objectively".

But we found that many Recruiters don't want to expose their "great candidate" to this sort of test, as it obviously becomes a reason not to hire if the candidate does not do well. So, even with the mechanism for identifying this sort of problem, the appetite for the solution tends to be much lower from Recruiters than from Clients.

And although Onetest has recently launched a no-contract, no-commitment, only-pay-when-you-use Recruiting Psych system for the UK (www.onetestexpress.co.uk), it unfortunately does not yet include the Values Inventory. When it does get added to the portfolio, what do you think the ratio of Client-side requests to Recruiter-side requests will be?

Comment by Christopher Perez on April 11, 2012 at 1:02pm: Great post which was very timely for me personally. I'm working on one search in particular right now where my lead candidate is motivated because she believes she is undervalued by her current employer. I make it a point to give my impressions of each candidate's motivations when I present them to a client (and before they ask about it). Most candidates in my experience have been pretty forthright about this, but it's something I keep an eye on. In this current situation, there is a good level of trust between the candidate and me as we have known each other for a few years and I have placed her in a consulting role previously. But you always have to be vigilant for signs that there's something else going on...

These nuances and subtleties are what get me out of bed in the morning. They make the profession challenging and fun for me.

Comment by Cora Mae Lengeman on April 11, 2012 at 1:50pm: Nice post. I also have a list of questions that I go through with candidates - that runs along your line of thinking - before passing them on to my client. My list is longer and a bit more in-depth and I always do it in person so I can guage the non-verbal responses. Very enlightening post, thanks for sharing.

Comment by Bob McIntosh on April 11, 2012 at 7:57pm: Wow. Great post. You bring up some key "red flags" that I have seen in my customers but refuse to believe the worst. Thanks. I'll share with my network.

Comment by Linda Ferrante on April 20, 2012 at 10:14pm: Much of what you are talking about is discussed during our interview process. There is a reason why our interviews are 3-4 hours in length! We strongly encourage the candidates AND the clients to be honest about the motivators, culture, responsibilities, up front to avoid setting everyone up for failure. If we address this first, and work together during the initial trial hire process, we work to eliminate 'surprise' events like the candidate leaving. More often than not, we can say that a candidate is still there two and three years down the road. Just today I received an email from an employee who said it was her on year anniversary with her new position and wanted to thank me again! I love those emails. MUCH better than the other kind.....