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Permalink Reply by Sandra McCartt on March 5, 2012 at 7:02pm

On pain of death do not call candidates in the same office one after another.  If they are in the same company but not in the same department just ask that they keep the information you share with them confidential as sometimes candidates will mention to a co worker something about a job and the co worker checks it out and gets hired before they get a chance to interview.  Protect themselves is the theme.

 

Tread lightly when contacting several candidates in the same company or the word gets around and you get tagged as staging a raid and people tend to think that you are not interested in them as an individual.  If you get one that looks like a good fit.  Work with that candidate if he/she is turned down ask them if they would refer someone to you who might have more experience if that is the problem or who might not be as highly compensated.  Get two or more candidates from the same company submitted on the same job and you will probably cause more angst than you want to cause.

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Permalink Reply by Roland Kuehn on March 5, 2012 at 7:43pm

Thanks, Sandra! I was pretty sure I had answered my own question as I typed it out but I certainly appreciate you confirming it.

Sandra McCartt said:

On pain of death do not call candidates in the same office one after another.  If they are in the same company but not in the same department just ask that they keep the information you share with them confidential as sometimes candidates will mention to a co worker something about a job and the co worker checks it out and gets hired before they get a chance to interview.  Protect themselves is the theme.

 

Tread lightly when contacting several candidates in the same company or the word gets around and you get tagged as staging a raid and people tend to think that you are not interested in them as an individual.  If you get one that looks like a good fit.  Work with that candidate if he/she is turned down ask them if they would refer someone to you who might have more experience if that is the problem or who might not be as highly compensated.  Get two or more candidates from the same company submitted on the same job and you will probably cause more angst than you want to cause.

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Permalink Reply by Valentino Martinez on March 11, 2012 at 2:32pm

How do you handle multiple candidates in the same company?

Sandra is right—you don’t want to approach a company like a Bull in a china shop. 

It will draw negative attention to you and your client.  However, the job for us external recruiters is to make new high potential contacts--and any would-be candidate knows you're about the business of finding top talent and will be filtering through others as well.  And there is a silver lining in hiring a strong candidate away from a competitor--once hired they can help identify and bring out others.

It's not surprising that once a new hire see the grass is actually greener with another employer--they will tell their professional friends.  And there is a natural occurrence, when a fellow employee and good friend, is leaving an employer for what appears to be a better opportunity, that those left behind will often ask to be remembered if a good opportunity exists with the new employer.

I actually built an effect Employee Referral Program based on that concept and widely advertised to great effect--Bring a friend to your new place of work...and they did.

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Permalink Reply by Bill Schultz on March 11, 2012 at 7:21pm

Try to keep it less than 3 per day, however don't paralyze yourself by thinking that these people will jump up and talk about getting recruited. Especially if they are considering it.
As a recruiting manager, I loved getting calls that my recruiter was "raiding" a company.
I usually bought them lunch.

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