Making a Candidate Offer: How to maximise your chances of Success

In a recent poll of over 300 GTM Talent Acquisition Specialists, via our Community, The Launch Collective, we asked:

What percentage of offers have you seen declined this year to date?

Through this Poll, we identified that some our our members, were seeing up to 30% of their offers declined. Not only is this a waste of valuable Talent Acquisition and Hiring Manager resource, it also increases the Time to Hire, resulting in increased lost revenue for the business.

Here at Strive, we have worked hard to maximise our offer process, addressing potential issues right from the outset of the hiring process. We recently created a comprehensive guide to successfully making an offer, which shares some best practices as to how to manage the offer process, to maximise the probability of your employment offer being accepted.

Please reach out to a member of the team to gain access to the full document!

We have captured below, a summary of the information from our Guide and some of the areas we will cover throughout this blog include:

• The Initial Engagement of a Candidate.
• The Interview Process.
• Risking the Candidate & Trial Closing.
• Making the Offer.

 

The Initial Engagement of a Candidate

From the offset, ensure you understand your candidate’s current situation in full - and their future expectations and wants.

It is key here to not just focus in purely on financials – whilst this is of course important, there will be other drivers in their decision-making process which are key to understand. 

Some areas to consider?

• Financials.
• Equity.
• Career Progression.
• Other Hiring Processes they are active in.

Note that in a number of States in the USA, it is illegal to ask a Candidate about their salary history as a way of determining their future pay. Ensure you are up-to-date on all relevant legislation for both the State you are hiring in and the State your Company is based in.

 

The Interview Process

To increase the probability of an offer acceptance at the end of the interview process, its key to ensure your process is as efficient as possible - and that you use the process to engage the candidate and ensure there is a momentum to their decision making.

Some suggestions for your Process:

• Continue to revisit the candidate's expectations at every touchpoint.
• Manage the Momentum.
• Maximise Engagement Opportunities.
• Remove Internal Blockers.

Remember that to win the ‘war for talent’, there are typically two ways to ensure you win: Pay more than anyone else; or increase efficiency in your hiring process.

Whilst your interview process should be thorough and considered - equally don’t waste time - “time kills deals”. Keeping candidates waiting can leave them feeling unloved and their other processes could become more appealing.

 

Risking the Candidate & Trial Closing

Before the Final Interview, the Agency (or Internal Recruiter) should fully risk and start trial-closing the candidate. Reach out to Strive to learn more about the process we use. 

Some other tips we would encourage you to follow are:

• Identify buying signals.
• Ensure you have fully understood the Risk.
• Use the information gathered during the process to clarify their interest in the Role. 
• Communicate all this Information to the Hiring Manager before the final interview. 

 

Making the Offer

If you have now:

• Engaged and qualified the Candidate thoroughly from the outset of your process.
• Executed an optimised interview process, which maximises opportunity for Candidate engagement.
• Fully risked and trial closed the Candidate.

Then the offer itself should be a “slam dunk’!

We recommend that the Hiring Manager (or whomever the Candidate would be reporting into) presents the offer. They should do this using the intel provided to them from the trial close, and should set expectations from a timeline perspective.

Use your Agency (or Internal Recruiter) to have an honest chat with the Candidate about the offer – what are the reservations or red flags? Where does the HM need to sell? Ensure the Candidate has a point of contact whom they feel they can be entirely honest with.

 

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