When a job offer is rescinded

If you’ve ever recruited anyone into a role, you know that the process takes hard work, expertise and intuition. With the economic disruption due to Covid-19, what recruiters need right now are the abilities to listen and empathise.

In February, I began recruiting a senior software engineer for a client. By March, we’d selected a candidate and made an offer. Then Covid struck and the job was put on hold and the offer rescinded. In May, I was asked to restart the hiring process so I found another suitable candidate, got contracts signed and this time it was the candidate who rescinded the contract. Third time around, I found a highly skilled, local developer who’d been retrenched (due to Covid) and who wanted to work closer to home. He started with my client in June, a full 4 months after the search began.

This highlights how the pandemic has played havoc with employers and candidates alike. Both sides are trying to navigate the best possible outcome for themselves in an unprecedented jobs market. It’s perfectly natural. As recruiters, we can assist this process for both parties with active listening and empathy and with persistence.

Listening with an open mind is a skill that doesn’t come naturally to most of us. Few of us were taught listening skills at school. Woefully ever fewer of us were taught about empathy and how to practice it. It's one of my biggest bug bears in life. When hearing something we don’t like, we tend to make assumptions, interrupt, defend or go straight into fix-it mode. How can you fix something you don't fully understand? If instead we can ‘listen to understand’ we take more time, we ask better questions and we reflect back what we’ve heard until our understanding is confirmed. Only then have we earned the right to offer our suggestions and advice.

One impact of the pandemic is that our expertise as recruiters is being more heavily relied on by employers. We’re providing advice on broad staffing challenges, such as allocation (ie downsizing, redeployment or hiring), employment contracts, health and safety obligations of employers to their employees, and induction procedures for new staff who are onboarding/working from home.

By listening to our client’s concerns and staying focused on their needs, we build a greater understanding of their business and a more trusting relationship. This will serve us well into the post-Covid future.

Jess Pearson, Recruitment Specialist, OrgMent Talent Solutions