Hearing No…

Today I lost the first guy in my pipeline of recruits. Someone I had been courting for a while finally decided they were not in the right personal space to make the leap across continents. After a bunch of success, I guess the streak had to end at some point, and so I am taking it in my stride (though I hate to lose good people!).

This reminded me of a time only a few months ago when I was busy saying no to a lot of opportunities. There are three kind of reactions that I saw, and its pretty clear that at least one was pretty dumb.

1. Angry — I had once instance when the CEO shot me an on-the-spur-of-the-moment email telling me that I had been such a waste of his time. Now this must count as the worst thing you can do because we will end up crossing paths one way or the other. Its a small world.
2. Oblivious — Well I am sure they were not oblivious to me saying no, but I have had a set of folks who just decided to completely shut down the process and completely ignored me from then on. Now I am no big shot, but some closure would have been nice.
3. Warm — And then there were those who heard me out, understood how I felt, dug in to see if there was any way for them to change my mind, and then shook my hands and moved on. I would work with/for them at some point in a heartbeat.

Recruiting is also an opportunity to advertise your company and the culture you are building. Most folks you talk to will not end up joining you, but they will talk to others about how the process was, and how they felt. And how you treated them.

So the next time you hear a ‘No’ from that elusive candidate, stop, hear their motivations, shake hands, give the person a hug and move on. There will be other ways to work together.