“Another Shot” Recruiting – Providing New Hires That Were Lied To An Escape Offer

80% of managers say lying is acceptable. As a result, 72% of new hires report being lied to during their hiring process. And once they realize that the job that they got was nowhere near their “promised job.” Many quickly decide they will now be open to an “escape job offer,” which will quickly allow them to leave the company that will probably continue lying to them. 

What Is The “Another Shot” Recruiting Strategy?

The “another shot” recruiting strategy is designed to provide these now disenchanted new hires (who were recently your top candidates) with an “escape job offer” from your company that they can accept right before resigning. This strategy is called “Another Shot recruiting” because it gives your hiring manager “another shot” (or second chance) at landing the former top candidate. Your company would have probably landed them if your talent competitor hadn’t extensively misrepresented numerous aspects of their new job and company.

Who Lies The Most During Hiring, Candidates Or Hiring Managers?

Is hiring just another variation of liar’s poker, where the hiring manager and the candidate take turns lying to look good? Well, I have found that most assume that “the candidates” as a group are the biggest liars during the hiring process. However, the data actually reveals that 35% of candidates admit to having lied during the hiring process. Surprisingly, an even higher percentage of hiring managers/recruiters (36%) also admit to frequent lying.

Managers Lie About The Critical Areas That Make A Job/Company Compelling

Recent research by CareerBuilder reveals that of the hiring managers who lie, 30% say that they lie most or all of the time. And when managers do lie, they do it in areas that are critical to job acceptance. For example, 40% of the managers who lie do it in the area of employee growth opportunities, and an astonishing 24% lie in their offer letters. Other important areas where lying is prevalent include 28% lying about their benefits, 26% lying about the company’s financial health, and 24% lying about their company’s compensation. Obviously, when new hires find that they have been lied to in so many of these important areas, most immediately consider quitting. 

Lying causes new hire turnover

Sadly, 92% of managers report that their misled candidates have accepted one of their jobs. And after starting their job, 55% of managers say they’ve had new hires quit because they felt betrayed. And among those new hires that quit because of this rampant misrepresentation, 49 % left quickly (within their first month). 

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The Many Advantages Of Another Shot Recruiting (AS)

Even though the concept of another shot recruiting is easy to understand, the project leader should still expect significant resistance from HR, hiring managers, and recruiting leadership when implementing the strategy. You can help to limit this resistance by emphasizing the many benefits that the strategy provides. Those benefits include:

• You will face little recruiting competition – few corporate recruiting leaders are willing to try this (or any other) aggressive recruiting approach. Your company will likely be the only one that provides your targeted candidate with an escape offer.
• Your ROI will be very high – you can expect a high business impact from this AS strategy. It will give your hiring managers a second chance at landing top performers in high-impact critical jobs. And while your return will be high, your recruiting costs will be negligible. The AS approach will be sparingly used on a handful of top candidates in critical jobs. And the only real investment that you will need to make will be the time it takes to put together a candidate selling plan. That first covers how to effectively convince your AS candidates that every aspect of your rescue offer is genuine and authentic. Next, you will need educational materials that not only provide action steps but also educate your hiring managers and recruiters about the many negative consequences that occur when you lie to your candidates.
• You can expect fast results – because so many of your targets will decide to leave during their first month on the job. You will be able to quickly learn if your recruiting strategy has been successful.
• Your AS approach may bring other top candidates – because other recent hires at your competitor will have also been lied to (both before and after being hired). You can expect each new hire who leaves to join your company to bring along at least one other top candidate as an employee referral.
• This AS approach will help you maintain a candidate pipeline – even in the cases where you don’t successfully land a top candidate this time around by simply maintaining a continued interest in this person. The candidate may allow you to keep them as an active member of your talent pipeline for future job openings. As part of your pipeline effort, placing a reminder flag in your schedule after one year is a good idea so you can revisit each new hire who decided to stay at their new company and determine if they are interested in joining your company.
• The AS strategy won’t interfere with your other recruiting strategies – fortunately, this AS approach operates independently. So it won’t interfere or conflict with your other active recruiting strategies.
• A reputation as an honest recruiting organization will help build your brands – as the word spreads among potential recruits about how your company’s honesty makes it stand out from the rest. This will further strengthen both your employer brand and your product brand.
• You won’t face any significant legal or ethical issues – as long as you avoid any serious interference in their business operations or directly encourage the new hire to quit. You won’t encounter any serious legal issues using this strategy.
• Your results will be even better if you assign a top recruiter to the AS effort – because the critical success factors for this program include relationship building and candidate convincing. Your recruiting results will improve dramatically if you assign a top recruiter who has these capabilities to each recruiting target. And if you reward the recruiter for successful AS hiring, you can expect even better results.
• Metrics will help you reduce your own company’s lying – obviously, you should also want to know whether your own hiring managers are being 100% truthful with your candidate. So, after each new hire’s first few weeks on the job. You should anonymously survey each of them to find out what percentage of them felt deceived during your hiring process.

Incidentally, you can learn more about how to get your own recent employee quits to return here.

Outlining The Implementation Steps Of The Another Shot Strategy

The execution of the “another shot” recruiting process begins after you decide that you will use every opportunity to land the top candidates you lost. The second step is to start identifying the talent competitor companies that frequently lose new hires because of their pattern of lying. Then, when you lose a top candidate to one of these identified companies in a head-to-head recruiting battle. Next, allocate a portion of your recruiter’s time to subtly keep in touch with your lost candidate to judge their unhappiness level and likelihood of accepting a rescue offer. When you determine they’re open to a rescue offer, proceed by providing them with a completely honest and updated offer at which they will likely jump at.

One Final Action Step

In today’s tough talent market, growing companies simply can’t afford to lose any of their top candidates (especially those who work in AI or cybersecurity) for any reason. I find it strange that most corporations don’t have a formal process for accurately determining the specific reasons why they are losing their top finalists. You can’t fix the loss of your top candidate problem until you know precisely why you are losing. So, in addition to implementing the “Another Shot” strategy. I recommend that recruiting leaders also implement a candidate exit survey. After a 60-day delay, anonymously ask your top two finalists in key jobs to reveal why they dropped out of our recruiting process or why they chose another offer over ours. You can learn more details on how to conduct candidate exit interviews here.

Notes for the reader

This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was labeled “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.
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