Last week, I shared an article written by Dr. John Sullivan regarding the consequences many organizations experience due to treating their candidates disrespectfully. Of course, the reason this pattern continues is that the negative impact of this behavior is not felt directly. The candidates leave the interviews and the hiring managers never hear from them again. 
But, that doesn’t mean the impact doesn’t exist. Like a low-level infection or difficult-to-diagnose illness, it is the type of thing that saps a person’s energy. For organizations, it often results in missed opportunities. Missed opportunities are doubly hard to swallow because they cause your competitors to grow while you stagnate.
This discussion prompted quite a bit of feedback from WorkPuzzle readers. I received permission to share* one of these responses from a business owner who I respect a great deal. I like his response because it demonstrates how treating candidates with respect and dignity (what we all should be doing) resulted in his company capturing additional opportunities.
“Ben, What a great article! I have two stories that reinforce the positives of treating candidates right. Both involve [my previous company]. As I’m sure you know, in almost any consulting business, today’s employees (or job candidates) are almost ALWAYS tomorrow’s prospects and customers.
In the first case, we interviewed one particular candidate for a senior leadership position. While the candidate was a great cultural fit, the tasks the job required didn’t match his experience. As much as everyone liked this guy, I couldn’t extend an offer.
Avoiding my natural inclination to call him up and give him the bad news over the phone, I invited him back to my office. My message to him was simple- everyone strongly wanted him on the team, but the position wasn’t a good match. We all felt that we’d just be putting him in a no-win situation had we made him an offer. He was disappointed, but he seemed to take it well.
Two months later, I got a voice mail from him indicating he had changed positions and asked me to call him at his new employer. I remember the details like it was yesterday…I called him back at 3:30 on a Thursday afternoon. He explained that he had, just that previous Monday, started a new position with a large customer of ours. Then he floored me:
‘Look, here’s why I’m calling. I’d like you to assemble a team of eight consultants for a project. If you can assemble that team and have the profiles of the team members to me by 8am Monday morning, the project is yours.’
I couldn’t believe it. We absolutely could assemble the right team, but I asked him why he was calling us and not his former employer (one of our competitors). His answer:
‘I was so impressed with the way you and your team handled my interview, that I said to myself that day…I hope I get a chance to hire them some day.’
We went on to win that project, which would eventually grow to produce $2.5 million in revenue over the following two years.
Here’s the second story: I got a call from one of our East Coast offices, asking me to interview a job candidate who was thinking of re-locating. Before the firm spent the money to fly the candidate out, they wanted our office to interview the candidate. Since the position was a senior-level position, we scheduled a full day of interviews.
Over lunch, it became apparent to me that the candidate had the right background, however, he made many negative comments about former bosses. I suspected he may have some attitude issues. Regardless, he seemed like a nice enough guy and, again, it was very likely he could end up as a potential customer. So, we completed the interview and committed to following-up with our sister office. My feedback to them was, essentially, ‘He seems to have the right skills, but there were some red flags.’
Our East Coast office eventually chose to fly him out for an in-person interview, but did not extend him an offer. Three weeks later, one of our sales executives received a voice mail from this interviewee who ended up working for one of our company’s key prospects (this was a company whom we’d been trying to meet with, but couldn’t get past the various screens). The voice mail stated:
‘I know you’ve been trying to schedule a meeting with our company. Would you please call my assistant and get on my calendar? We have three projects we’d like you to start on immediately.’
Unbelievable. I personally went to the meeting and when I asked why we were being given the opportunity to do not one, but three projects, she said:
‘A friend of mine just interviewed with you and he was so impressed with the people and the process, that I decided to give you a chance.’
Those three projects lead to a steady stream of work (totaling well over $1 million) over a five year period with one of the area’s highest profile companies. What we had failed to do in months of cold-calling, we were able to accomplish with one candidate interview- even though the candidate did not get the job.
Both stories, I have told over and over both as encouragement and as a warning to those on my team – An encouragement about how we could impact our sales just by treating job candidates respectfully, and a warning since in both cases, had we handled things poorly, we would never have known why we were not given the opportunity to work on these very large and very high profile projects.”
Think about it–$3.5 Million in revenue that would have likely gone to this company’s competitors if his company had failed to impress their candidates. Wow–who can afford not to apply this lesson!
*Note regarding providing feedback on WorkPuzzle discussions: We don’t receive a lot of open commentary regarding our blogs because many of your are (appropriately) concerned about posting public comments. If you have feedback or want to make private comments, you’re always welcome to email Dave Mashburn or me directly (workpuzzle_at_hiringcenter.net (replace the _at_ with a normal @)). Your comments will be kept private unless you give us permission to autonomously share, as today’s reader did.
Editor’s Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you’re an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the “comments” link below.
