That call

My friend is in luck. He is looking to fill a senior role and, after a series of interviews, he ended up with three amazing candidates to choose from.

This was unimaginable to him only a year ago. In fact, he can’t seem to recall such an event in his long, 7-year career in tech.

His team loved all three candidates, but has to pick one because the era of over-hiring is behind us. After an intense discussion, the decision is made.

My friend’s recruiter quickly reaches out to the winner. She is exhilarated, but asks for a few days to consider the offer, which is a slang for entertain other offers. Fair enough. Seniors are still in demand. But my friend sets a strict deadline in 48 hours. After all, he’s got strong alternatives.

The recruiter immediately sends an update to the other two candidates:

Sorry this is taking so long. You’ve left a great impression on the team, but please bear with us until Monday!

The winner kept her promise. It’s Friday evening and the recruiter just got an email from her. She accepts! She’s going out with friends to celebrate. HR will prepare the contract for e-signatures first thing next week.

On Monday morning, the recruiter sends a polite rejection email to the two amazing candidates that weren’t picked. All but the first paragraph are generic, thanking them for their patience, reassuring them it was a tough choice and wishing them the best of luck in their future endeavours.

Six months pass and my friend’s business is still doing well. The market hasn’t crashed (too deep) and there is no recession in sight. Interest rates are on their way down. AI hasn’t replaced everyone.

He needs another senior. The recruiter runs the ads.

But this time my friend is not as lucky as he was half a year ago. Come to think of it, it does seem like there has been less news coverage of tech companies firing people lately. At least less than before.

“What about those amazing two candidates?” his team asks. The recruiter checks their LinkedIn. They haven’t switched jobs yet! They may still be waiting for the right opportunity! After all, the tech job market hasn’t recovered. Both FT and Bloomberg are saying so. And they have the data.

The recruiter boldly and personally reaches out to the two previously rejected candidates. They never respond. Oh well.

My friend shrugs. It probably isn’t the right time anymore. Perhaps they found something and haven’t been bothered to update their LinkedIn profile. Engineers only use LinkedIn when looking for a job.

Or maybe the rejection still hurts. Humans are wired to dread rejection. Especially by a group their survival depends on. Most engineers can survive just fine without a job these days, but ancient instincts remain.

True as that may be, there is something my friend could have done better.

If I am the hiring manager – say, a staff engineer, a team lead, a VP or a CTO – and I just spent hours interviewing a candidate in what is likely one of the final stages of their interview process that is filled with hope and aspiration, whether I want to or not, I now have a real, human relationship with that person. I know them and they know me. Not deeply, but we shared a moment, as it were. An important moment.

Given my status as the hiring manager and the fact that, due to the nature of our work, I was able to understand their value much better than my recruiter, the relationship between the candidate and myself carries a much larger weight than the one between the candidate and the recruiter. We all know it’s not the recruiter who decides.

Recruiters get paid as much as they do not only because they are willing to do the tedious legwork of finding the right person, but because they are willing to carry the emotional burden of ad hoc human relationships instead of some guy who just wanted to write code.

It is unfortunate that the hiring manager cannot personally respond to all the candidates they have interviewed. There truly isn’t enough time, especially in organisations that hire often. But if they run into an amazing person they can imagine working with in the future, they should, without an exception, continue the conversation instead of the recruiter.

Over the course of my career, which now spans more than a quarter of a century, I have seen the job market go up and down a few times. But what I haven’t seen is too many amazing candidates I’m too busy to call and say:

Joe, this sucks because I enjoyed meeting you so much and I would hire you right now if I could, but we had to pick just one and decided to offer this role to another amazing candidate. I hope you won’t hate us for it and won’t mind if I call you again when we have a new opportunity for you, hopefully an even better one!

Or something along those lines.

If you are working for a big company with robust HR, you may not be allowed to do this. Too bad. But then the size of your organisation is likely protecting you from the downsides of not doing it.

My friend’s startup had no such excuse. And the downsides of not hiring great people in startups are brutal. All the blogs are saying that, but it can still take more than 7 years to learn and make that call.

Doing it was hard every time. But it also felt great every time.

And boy did it pay off in the long run.