When we were approached by an Agri-Robotics client to help them fill an Engineer position, we were confident of having things successfully delivered on and closed off within a couple of weeks.
This is a client we’d worked with many times before, and filled essentially this very same role for them multiple times before as they grew their engineering team. Our offer acceptance rate with said client had been 100%. However, things don’t always go this smoothly in the world of recruitment…
Initially the process panned out as normal and as planned. Candidates sourced in good time, all seemingly keen on the role. One stood out, was offered the position and immediately accepted verbally. A job well done it seemed. Formal offer letter raised and sent to the candidate to review, sign and return and then… nothing. Days passed, and still no correspondence from the candidate, with attempts to get hold of them unsuccessful. Long story short, we never heard from this candidate again and I guess we’ll never know what happened. Eventually we had to make a call to rescind the offer and go back to market.
Thankfully we were able to deliver another candidate in quick time, again we sailed through the interview process and to offer relatively trouble free, BUT admittedly with a feeling that the candidate was in a 50/50 situation in terms of whether or not they’d be likely to accept. Unfortunately it didn’t go our way – with the candidate in a relatively stable job and unsure that joining our client, a start-up, would give him the security he needed.
Licking our wounds, we were back to market again. Thankfully, again, we sourced another candidate that we were able to get to offer stage. Primed to accept, on the day of offer we were suddenly greeted by a message from the candidate that they’d ended up in hospital having surgery due to an unforeseen emergency issue. Ultimately they deemed themselves unable to accept – whether or not the hospital issue was true (or maybe other factors were at play?), again we’ll never know.
Now we were in unchartered territory – never having had 3 offer rejections on one role before. This is where our prior and ongoing relationship with the client came into play. Luckily they still seemed confident in our ability to get the role filled, and our history with them – along with their clear intent to review CVs and move through the process in swift fashion – gave us confidence to persevere.
Another well-matched candidate was sourced, interviews were passed and offer stage was reached. The candidate was extremely enthusiastic, accepted and – success! – offer letter and contracts were signed. The candidate seems a particularly strong match and was even able to start in the job sooner than expected. Maybe everything happens for a reason…
We were in two minds as to whether or not to post this case study – does it look bad on us that we weren’t able to fill the role first time? However, we feel it’s important to convey the reality of recruitment, good and bad. No recruitment agency out there fills every role first time; the question then becomes how willing are they to stick with you when the going gets tough?
We pride ourselves on forging strong partnerships with our clients that allow us to overcome bumps in the road, hopefully this case study is a good example of our ability to do just that.
