A good reason to keep in touch

One of the more interesting job placements I made as a recruiter was when I helped a guy get a job as an IT technical support rep for a large financial services firm.

The job itself was fairly standard and the interview process was nothing out of the ordinary although it did involve a written test which is somewhat rare. Most companies don’t do testing especially for a relatively junior role like this, but in this case a skills test was administered as part of the interview process.

My candidate did well in the test and during the first and second interviews as well. I recall him mentioning after the second interview that he really felt he was going to get a job offer.

If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard a job searcher tell me that…

Alas, the job ended up going to someone else, a candidate who was being represented by one of my colleagues, a colleague who incidentally I’m very close with (he was my first manager when I became a recruiter) and he was also the client manager meaning that he was the person dealing directly with the hiring manager and was the account manager for them.

He told me that my candidate was in fact the runner up for the position and had finished second out of about 10 people they’d interviewed. The hiring manager had told my colleague that my candidate had done very well in the interview process but was basically the guy they’d have hired if the guy who ended up getting the job hadn’t been available.

My candidate was very disappointed as he really liked the job, the company and especially the hiring manager. I remember him telling me “I could really learn a lot from this guy” meaning the hiring manager, the guy he’d have worked for had he gotten the job.

In this case as is with so many things in life, finishing in second is like finishing in last because it doesn’t get you anything. Unless you get the job, it probably doesn’t mean much to be told that you were the bridesmaid and not the bride!

Or so we all thought…

About six months pass by and I’m still keeping my eyes open for this job candidate as although he was working, he was still looking for a better job.

Suddenly one day I get a call from my colleague and he asks me if my candidate is still looking for a job to which I reply yes, he was. I’d spoken with him one week earlier and he confirmed he was still looking for a job.

It turns out that the client who had hired someone else for the technical support rep role 6 months earlier needed to hire another person to replace a guy who had been promoted within the company.

Typically a company that faces this situation would do what most companies would do when they need to hire a new person: they go through the usual hiring process and start from scratch.

Fortunately though, the hiring manager for this position didn’t want to do that and didn’t see the point in starting over from scratch. He remembered how much he liked my candidate, remembered how much his team members liked my candidate, and asked my colleague if my candidate might still consider working for them.

My candidate was more than happy to reconsider the job and at the invitation of the hiring manager, went for another interview which was more like a “let’s get to know each other again” interview since they’d met 6 months earlier. They basically reiterated what they had discussed during the interview process 6 months earlier and confirmed what each other was looking for.

The same day of this interview, my candidate got a job offer and he took the job.

The company didn’t bother interviewing anyone else, they just interviewed him.

From the time we got word that they had the job open to the time my candidate got a job offer, only 2 days had passed.

And the company didn’t make my candidate go through the hoops of going through an entire interview process again just because 6 months had passed.

Moral of the story: How many times have you been in touch with a hiring manager after they’ve hired someone else, just to see what’s going on with the company and to see if anything has changed? You never know, maybe the person they hired isn’t working out or maybe when you contact them, the hiring manager recalls how much they liked you and that perhaps they decide to find a place for you in the firm afterall.

I’ve seen that happen.

When you’ve interviewed with a company and even after you don’t get the job but the hiring manager compliments you on your skills and performance, keeping in touch with them and dropping them a quick email a month or two after they hire someone else isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

What have you got to lose at that point?

You might just find that this time around your chances at getting the job are better than last time, just like my candidate found out.

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