Daniel Yee considers the job offer process and how well – or not so well – this goes can have a lasting impact.

Recruitment can loosely be defined as the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, interviewing and ultimately selecting the best individual for a role within an organisation. As anyone that has been through or has had to run recruitment processes before knows, each step of this overall process can be fraught with its own set of challenges that can make finding the right candidate a less than enviable task.

Given these challenges, we encourage our clients to run recruitment processes in a manner that are as timely and efficient as circumstances allow for – not only to maximise chances of getting the best result - but also to ensure that candidates involved in the process, whether successful or not, have the best possible experience. A candidate’s experience in a recruitment process is often where they get their first exposure to a firm and can make lasting impressions on how positively - or negatively - they view the firm and its brand moving forward.

Whilst this is not new news and we all know of recruitment processes gone awry through lack of clarity in job briefs, poor or no feedback and lack of timeliness of interviews; an underrated component of all of this is how offers are handled and delivered. It may sound strange, but giving and receiving a job offer is quite often an emotive situation and it is important that both parties handle the haggle and negotiation in good faith.

At JMES, we have heard of recent situations where even job offers that were ultimately accepted but were handled poorly by the employer meant that their newest employee that they jumped through many hoops to attract and hire is now starting with a bad taste in their mouth given how they were treated during the offer stage – not the desired outcome when starting a new chapter in one’s career!

As importantly, if an offer is poorly handled and ultimately rejected, it only takes a few slightly negative conversations between the previously-offered candidate and others in their peer group for a firm and its brand to be tarnished in the market. Having a brand that is tarnished in a local market that is very small, and perpetually candidate-short, makes it immeasurably harder to attract the right talent to your organisation, as quality candidates that are well looked after and only passively looking at new opportunities choose to opt-out of a recruitment process before it even really begins.

If you or someone in your team needs any advice on how to best handle a recruitment process from forming a brief to handling the final offer, please do reach out to any of the JMES team here

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