Being Pushy...or Taking the Initiative?

When a job candidate seems at first to overstep the mark, don't be too quick to write him off. Your company needs resourceful people

By Liz Ryan

Dear Liz,

Yours,
Charmaine

Dear Charmaine,

Let's back up and look at what has happened. During your screening interview, you saw the man as a possible final candidate for your account manager opening. You told him so when you said you'd be talking with Amanda about him. So far, so good. I wince at the next part of your letter, where you say, "As far as I could see, I was doing the candidate a favor." Is it a favor to let a person know the next step in the process?

One of the challenges we face in the "war for talent" hiring arena is overcoming the notion that whenever we chat amiably with a candidate, share a bit of the process with her or exert ourselves to move him or her forward in the pipeline, it's a big favor. Maybe we're doing ourselves and our companies a favor by taking action to get a good candidate onto our team more quickly. (They're not in infinite supply, after all.)

A different way to look at your candidate's move (cc:ing Amanda Jones on his thank-you note to you) is that he was reinforcing the action you told him you'd take: bringing Amanda into the conversation concerning him as a candidate for your opening. From that perspective, the candidate did nothing wrong and in fact earned points for being on the ball. He remembered Amanda's name (or wrote it down in the elevator), went home, composed a thank-you note, deduced Amanda's e-mail address and cc:d her on his correspondence. Seems perfectly legit to me.

He didn't bcc: Amanda or call her on the phone and say "Charmaine told me that you and I would be meeting." That would be inappropriate because the decision whether to schedule a second meeting is Amanda's alone. Can we fault him for cc:ing Amanda after you told him that his story would be shared with her? Not in my book.

As the front-line person in a corporate hiring process, it is easy to be miffed when we feel that our gatekeeper role has been undervalued or that we've been leapfrogged. That didn't happen here. You told the candidate "I will tell Amanda about you." The gate between him and Amanda, in other words, had already been opened.

You say "I'm tempted to cross his name off the finalist list." Imagine that you see Amanda in the hall and she says "I saw the e-mail from Bill Price. Should I meet him this week?" and that you say "No, I crossed him off the list because he disrespected me by writing to you directly." Think of that statement from Amanda's POV and it sounds petty and ridiculous (no offense, but it really does). What's more important, hiring a talented person the firm needs, or punishing people who ever-so-slightly take the ball to their side of the court? It makes no sense to eject a candidate because your sense of propriety is (unreasonably, sorry to say) wounded. We need to be actively pulling talent into the firm, not pushing it away.

The job market is becoming more porous and dynamic every day. Some of the savviest new hires are coming aboard through their ingenuity, persistence, and tactics like the one this candidate employed. If it hasn't happened already, get ready to interview candidates that come to you not through a posted job ad but from Amanda herself: smart people who took the initiative to reach out to her, your office's GM, to tell their story. Are these candidates rule-breakers who should be cast out? No way. They may be just the sort of people you need to compete in the new-millennium, relationship-driven marketplace. The old, lockstep hiring "funnel" is giving way to a much more organic model for talent acquisition. As HR people and office managers, we can bemoan that change, or we can welcome it. Firms who are open to creative approaches will win the talent war, while our competitors stand by punishing job-seekers for showing initiative in their search tactics. Be sure you don't get caught in the wrong group.

Cheers,
Liz

Liz Ryan is an expert on the new-millennium workplace and a former Fortune 500 HR executive.