If you ask me what keeps me up at night, it would definitely be newly hired executive candidate who has accepted the job offer and set a 3 to 4 week start date with my client company.
Of course, you always expect at least 2 weeks but sometimes candidates need 3 or 4 weeks and that is a great deal of time before starting. Many things can happen during this interim period. It can give the current employer time to develop a new deal or new role for the employee who has given notice. The new employee may potentially have some buyers remorse about accepting the position. A personal situation could develop between acceptance of the job and actual start date that could impact arrival.
As a best in class retained executive search firm, we believe in using emotional “glue” to get the candidate to start thinking about the new employer during the 3 to 4 week timeframe. Here are some examples of what the search firm should be doing during this interim:
- call the candidate at about midpoint during the transition period to see how the transition is going
- suggest to the hiring manager that they send the candidate information to get up to speed on while they are in the transition period
- suggest to the hiring manager to get some future training dates on the new employees calendar
- suggest that the hiring manager call the candidate in transition at least once to see how everything is developing
A typical executive search takes 9 to 11 weeks to complete. It does not happen often at all but when a candidate commits to a start and backs out, the search project has to start from scratch again. Insuring that the new candidate is emotionally “glued” to the new company will pay off when a candidate shows up on the agreed upon start date.
