Ross Clennett Article

How to Avoid Declined Offers
and Accepted Counter Offers
by Ross Clennett

  

This article originally appeared in
   The Fordyce Letter  (September 2007 edition)

The Fordyce Letter is published monthly and is the leading publication for the recruitment, search and placement industry in the USA.

 

In today’s frantic employment market there are many recruiters bemoaning about how they would be billing top dollars if not for their ‘bad luck’ in having their candidates either decline offers or accept counter offers. They do this in the (mistaken) belief that their skill as recruiter had nothing to do with this state of affairs.  I doubt Roger Federer rationalises any defeat by Rafael Nadal as ‘bad luck’. I suspect Federer identifies the specific skill differential between himself and ‘Raf’ and then goes about doing his best to close the skill gap. That’s what champions do – they truly understand the old adage ‘the harder I practice, the luckier I get’.

 

So what’s the cause of the skill gap that has some recruiters appear to suffer more than their fair share of misfortune at the hands of ‘weak’ or ‘deceitful’ candidates at offer stage?  In my experience it can boiled down to the recruiter not understanding the difference between a candidate’s rational motivators and their emotional motivators, and how this difference impacts a candidate’s decision to stay or go when confronted with the reality of leaving their current employer.

 

Brain science tells us about the difference between the decision making of the left brain (rational brain) and the right brain (emotional brain). Legendary sales trainer Tom Hopkins puts it succinctly thus;

 

"Many of us try to sell our products through logic and only through logic. Remember this: seldom do people buy logically. They buy emotionally, and then defend their decisions with logic. Find ways to get them emotionally involved with your product or service."

 

In other words, human decision making, and therefore behaviour, is predominantly driven by emotional thought not rational thought.

 

As recruiters we are intimately involved with one of the most emotional decisions a person can make - changing jobs. Yet when I observe the questions recruiters typically ask in an interview, the following questions predominate:

 

What salary package will you accept?

What industry do you want to work in?

What job responsibilities are important to you?

How far are you prepared to travel to work each day?

What size company do you prefer to work in?

 

They are all valid questions whose answers provide you with a sound foundation on which to assess the candidate against your current vacancies for a likely match.

 

However they are only 20% of the equation. They are all left brain questions, accessing the candidate’s rational decision making.  The missing piece of the puzzle is the questions that access where the real decision is driven from, the candidate’s emotions (right brain).

 

Research consistently supports what recruiters know to be true from their on-the-job experience; that the major reason for people staying in, or leaving, their job is the quality of the relationship they have with their direct up-line supervisor/manager.

 

In other words, whether we stay or leave our employment is overwhelmingly an emotional decision. It is a natural human instinct to want to have our emotional needs met. And having them met at work is no less important than having them met at home, especially in this day and age when it is not uncommon to spend more waking hours with our boss and work colleagues, than with our partner and family!

 

So what are these emotional needs (also known as our Values) that we are seeking to have met through work?

 

Some examples are:

 

• Security (think public servants)

• Challenge – mental (think tax accountants)

• Challenge – physical (think brain surgeons)

• Recognition/being valued (think sales people)

• Love/caring (think social workers)

• Adventure (think overland tour drivers)

• Leadership (think CEO’s/GM’s)

• Creativity (think designers)

• Community service (think teachers)

• Independence (think authors)

• Accomplishment (potentially any job!)

 

The well reported trend of people ‘downshifting’ highlights the differences I am talking about. Downshifters have recognized that their emotional motivators were being compromised so they have left their current job/career (eg corporate executive) where their rational needs were being met (eg money, title) to find a job/career (eg teaching) more in line with their emotional needs (eg community service).

 

When an offer is on the line or a counter offer is made the candidate now confronts moving from the rational theory of leaving their current job (‘I want a better package’, ‘I want to change industries’ etc) to the emotional reality of leaving their current job (‘I love the people I work with’, ‘My boss has invested so much in my development’, etc). Even if their emotional concerns are quelled long enough to verbally accept the offer, it’s predictable that the candidate’s boss, when being delivered the resignation face-to-face, will pull all the emotional strings they can (and a smart boss knows the emotional strings of each staff member very well!) to prevent the departure.

 

We know what happens next; suddenly the recruiter finds the candidate is uncharacteristically not contactable for 48 hours, and then a one line email drops into our inbox unemotionally announcing, for some bland reason, that ‘I have decided not to accept the offer from XYZ Inc’. And we’re placement-less and frustrated as hell!

 

So, how (as much as is humanly possible) do we avoid this scenario happening?

 

The key is following three critical steps:

1. During the initial interview ensure you ask the candidate questions that will give you access to the candidate’s emotional motivators driving both their ‘go’ and ‘stay’ decisions with respect to work,

2. During the initial interview, and again before you put any offer to them, take the candidate from the rational thought of leaving their job, to the simulated emotional reality of resigning and leaving their current job,

3. Keep checking in with the candidate during the whole recruitment process to find out whether anything has changed (at work and at home) that could significantly impact on the candidate’s decision to leave their current employer and seek an alternative position.

Let me explain each step in more detail.

 

Firstly, we most effectively access the emotional motivators of a candidate at work by asking some, or all, of the following questions.

 

What part of your current job do you enjoy the most/least? Why?

What you most enjoy/not enjoy about working for your current boss? Why?

Tell me about the job that you have most/least enjoyed in your career? Why?

Tell me about the boss that you have most/least enjoyed working for in your career? Why?

 

Notice that these are behavioural interview questions where you are accessing the candidate’s emotional extremes (ie happiness v anger or frustration) with respect to past work situations. Remember the candidate’s past emotional responses are the most reliable guide to future emotional responses. You may be tempted to ask some questions about the candidate’s likely future behaviour. Although the answers are not irrelevant, it is important to keep in mind that these are speculative answers, based on what the candidate thinks will occur, it doesn’t guarantee this future behaviour will occur. Examples of these sorts of questions are;

 

What will you miss most about leaving your current employer
(your counter offer warning bell should be sounding very loudly if they answer ‘my manager’!)
 

What difficulties would you expect to be the most significant ones, when transitioning from your current role to this role at XYZ Ltd?

 

Secondly, let’s drill down on simulating the counter-offer conversation at either the initial interview and/or after they have received an offer. Because the offer is likely to be the point in the whole recruitment process where the candidate’s emotions are going to be most raw, it’s also the most vulnerable time for them in potentially changing their mind about leaving their current employer.

 

Knowing this I recommend you role-play the counter offer conversation with the candidate. Having gained solid information about the candidate’s relationship with their current boss, their reasons for leaving their current role, and their primary emotional drivers at work you should be able to effectively simulate a counter-offer conversation.

 

The role play allows you to watch and listen to what the candidate actually does and says in the conversation, which may be completely different to what the candidate may tell you they would do and say in such a conversation with their boss. In the role play, be alert to all the communication coming from the candidate’s body language and voice, which will tend to give you far more accurate information about the candidate’s vulnerability to a counter-offer than anything they might actually say.

 

I strongly advise you simulate a very difficult resignation conversation with the candidate (pulling the candidate’s emotional strings as hard as possible) so no matter how tough the candidate’s boss makes it in the real resignation conversation, they find it easier to handle than your simulated conversation.

 

After the simulated conversation, ask their permission to give them appropriate feedback and coaching, in how they handled the conversation, and how they might handle it more effectively.

 

If the candidate is displays significant vulnerability to a counter offer then be straight with them. Let them know you have major doubts about their motivation for leaving their current role. Tell them to think it over and call you back within 48 hours to tell you whether they really are serious about leaving. Either way you cannot lose. If they call you back to pull out of the process then you have saved yourself (and the client) time and heartache and if they call back and tell you they are serious then their commitment to leaving has just gone to a whole new level.

 

Thirdly, you must be alert to any change in the candidate’s situation at work or at home that makes it more likely that they will decline an offer, or accept a counter offer. Most recruiters operate under the (mostly) mistaken belief that a candidate will keep the recruiter abreast of any relevant changes that may impact their enthusiasm for a new job (eg increase in salary, new boss, partner’s parent has rapidly declining health, etc).

 

Although communicating with the candidate may be currently very front-of-mind for the recruiter, you can be assured that communicating their updated circumstances with the recruiter is much lower down the candidate’s current ‘To Do’ list!

 

The simple thing to do is to keep asking the candidate ‘has anything changed?’ questions. I would recommend directing specific questions to the areas that were highlighted when the candidate gave you the answers to the questions you asked in (1), above. For example:

 

You mentioned at our initial interview that you weren’t happy with the opportunities you boss was currently providing to you. Has anything changed in this area since then?

You mentioned at our initial interview that you were feeling pressured at home, due to your long hours at work. Has anything changed in this area since then?

At our interview six weeks ago you mentioned that you were having a performance review in the next month. Has that review happened? If so did anything come out of that review that either confirmed your decision to seek a new position, or to perhaps re-consider your job search?

 

You might be very surprised at the answers you get, based on the (mistaken) assumption that the critical (in your eyes) piece of information you have uncovered, would have been communicated to you by the candidate, without prompting.

 

The three things I have outlined to assist you avoid declined offers and accepted counter offers are not guaranteed to work every time. However by the consistent application of these three steps you should significantly reduce the ‘bad luck’ you have in not taking candidates from being a ‘theoretically interested’ candidate to a ‘emotionally committed’ job seeker. 

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