The work to “close” a candidate began months ago

Actual recent Scrabble tiles

I’ve recently “closed” a couple candidates. By “closed”, I mean “was brought into a candidate’s life at the ‘offer’ stage, as one last contact to nudge them to accept.”

It’s not something I’ve done much in the past¹, so like anything else new and important, I’ve been figuring out how to get better at it. After a particular “close” phone call, I thought about what the ideal conversation would have sounded like.

My theory is that it comes down to two things:

1. Integrity: Be yourself and tell the truth (good advice for any walk of life!)
2. Quality: Tell the candidate what they want to hear to increase the odds of accepting the job

The only stuff at the intersection of these two is the results of the effort you’ve already put in to make your team an awesome place to work.

So focus on whatever that means to you, now, and by the next time you’re closing a candidate, you can be yourself, tell the truth, and increase the odds of the candidate accepting the job.

Seems simple, almost tautologically so. The complexity is in figuring out what is that vision of your perfect team², being honest about where the team is now, and putting in the labor to move things in the right direction. How to do that is a post for another day.

Update, 2 years later: if you really do need to close a candidate today and are just reading this now, here’s a template (pick any/all that apply):

• Tech has not yet disrupted this $N billion dollar industry. [Current problems in industry, e.g. highly inefficient].
• [Similarities between the candidate’s current job/industry and yours]. You’ll hit the ground running on day one
• You’ll help save the planet by [environmental or social mission]
• You’ll get to work with awesome people, including [names of people on interview loop that candidate has met]
• You’ll get rich, given that we will IPO and become the largest company in this industry

¹ I have more experience as hiring-manager, where you have the benefit of being point-of-contact with the candidate for most of their journey through the pipeline, but the disadvantage is that by the “offer” stage, you’ve (ideally) already told them everything great about your company.

² I’m not trying to claim that any team I’ve ever supported is perfect. Just that — all other things being equal — the closer the team is to that ideal vision, the better the team is functioning.