7 Tips to increase possibility of candidate joining after offer made to him

7 Tips to increase “Candidate’s joining conversion rate”

If you are in recruitment, you can understand the pain when candidate do not join on his date of joining even after accepting the offer letter. Recruiter need to face many problems in such cases. Some of the reasons are as below.

• You need start the complete hiring process from Step 1.
• Extra time in hiring means loss of productivity and money for company.
• Huge pressure from hiring manager as his plan will fail, which was based on new candidate’s joining.
• Other problems associated with low manpower in a project.

Above are enough reasons for you to find out ways to reduce such incidence and increase candidate’s joining conversion rate. Here are some tips which will help you to increase candidate’s joining conversion rate. 

Tips 1 # Do not hire candidate who change his job frequently.

Candidate, who has changed his job every year, is not stable regarding his job choice and career. His intention is to get an offer and then start looking for job in market once again for little more hike in his salary. Even if you offer such candidate, there is high possibility of candidate not joining as he might have many other offers like from your side. So better be away from such candidate. 

Tips 2 # Profile offered should be attractive to candidate

As recruiter, you need to ensure that profile, you are offering to candidate, should be attractive to candidate. I am not suggesting you to make a profile attractive (which you can’t), but finding candidate for whom, profile offer by you is attractive. Candidate should be interested and excited to take this up. Sometimes, candidates do take offer, even if, they are not very excited about profile you are offering as they may not have any job in hand. They will keep looking for profile they are interested in and take up such profile as soon they get one. Hence it is important that you should sense, whether profile you are offering is exciting to candidate or not? Candidate, do give weight-age to profile same as they give to pay package.

Tips 3 # Salary offered to candidate should be competitive

This is similar to earlier tip. If you do not offer salary to candidate which is higher than current pay package then why candidate will join you?. There are very few people who would like to join you on same salary especially when you don’t have brand value. Every candidate expect salary raise in new company. Candidate is not bothered about your budget. If you can’t offer candidate a hike, chance are, candidate might not join you. Candidate may choose offer which has higher salary pay package. Pay package is always a primary reason of leaving existing company and joining new company. I am not advising you to give whatever candidate expect, I am suggesting to give offer to candidate who is in your budget and you are giving logical hike to him.

Also don’t try to fool the candidate with higher CTC and lower in hand. Today candidates are smart, they know what they are looking forward for? They understand that company benefits are same for everyone hence they will surely insist on higher in hand salary.

Tips 4 # Sale positives of your company, project, profile for which you are hiring

Every company has good and bad things. As an employee, you know, what are these good things? Hence you need to sale all these to candidate. Tell candidate about various benefits your company gives. Talk about work culture, fun at work etc etc. Do not simply close the offer by offering a letter and salary to candidate. You take download from hiring manager about project and position to hire. You need to sale all positives of project and position to candidate. I would suggest, you guide hiring manager to speak with candidate and tell him about project he will be working on, what are the learning he will get, what are the growth chances etc. 

By doing so you are actually engaging the candidate with company before joining and it increases the chance of his joining.

Normally, HR does all this at the time of induction. I am suggesting do a small part of it while offering to potential candidate.

Tips 5 # Call Candidate for interview 2-3 times

Earlier, I use to believe in hiring on faster speed. Call the candidate one day and if you like offer and close. But gradually, I learnt, that candidates who were called more than 2 times for interview or discussions are more likely to join after offer made, especially when you are hiring executives and above. As per your company recruitment process, you can call them for some IQ test, EQ test, technical test, asking them to submit salary proof related documents other than interview related rounds. This doesn't mean you need to call them un-necessary for more than twice. Set a process. I would not suggest calling candidate more than 3 times also as candidate get frustrated.

Concept is simple here. Candidate who is really interested in joining your company will take pain to come 2-3 times and candidate who don’t want to join you, will make excuses. In any case you don’t want to offer a candidate (even if he is most suitable) if you know chance of his joining is very low.

This is useful tip. Do apply it and let me know any impact on your joining conversion

Tips 6 # Take resignation acceptance copy after offer made

After you make an offer to a candidate, you should ask him to submit copy of his resignation mail or letter and later acceptance of resignation to you. He should do that within 3-5 days of offer acceptance. With this, you can at least be sure that he has not been retained by his existing company. If you sense delay in submission of resignation acceptance then you should better start working on finding another candidate.

Tips 7 # Pre employment Verification

This tip is not directly related with candidate joining but more with his sustainability in company. Some company do post employment verification to check credentials of the employee and in case any credential is found negative then worst case, employee need to leave the company which means opening of close position. 

I advocate that pre employment verification should be done in place of post employment verification. You should inform candidate both verbal and written (Application form) that once you accept the offer and resign from current company, we will conduct verification and in case any negative fact is found that offer can be cancelled. 

This will ensure that you will not suffer from working on a close position again after some time

Conclusion

There could be more good practices which my fellow HR friends must be following. I would request them to share some good tips they have implemented which helped them to increase the joining conversion in their company. Even after all above, I would suggest that Recruiter should always keep a Back up Candidate ready as Plan B. Normally, we do not spend much time on finding a back up candidate as we assume that candidate offered by us will surely join. It is too optimistic. Plan B will surely help you.

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