Welcome to Hacking Your Leadership. I'm Chris, I'm Lorenzo, and welcome to this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube at Hacking Your Leadership and leave us a review on iTunes. On this Thoughtful Thursday, I want to talk about a recent HR survey out of Gartner that said basically that out of thirty five hundred people that they interviewed, more than half of them accepted a job offer and then later backed out on it before their first day
of work. And that is those are incredibly high numbers. If you think about the number of people who accept a job, it means that what they went through to get that offer and that acceptance in some cases, unfortunately it's months in many cases. In most cases, it's weeks talking to several people to get a job offer, to accept the job, and then in that roughly one to three week period between you know, getting the acceptance and starting
it, they back out. And that's causing problems for a lot of you know, recruiters and hiring managers and companies who believe they have these roles filled and then they don't. But I think there's a lot that goes into why this is happening. What are your thoughts about this? Yeah, I think there is a lot that goes into why this is happening. I think there's a lot that is kind of a cross industries right now, just the juggling of those looking for work, those jobs that are open, the influx of
interest. I think people are still you know, settling into the life and the work that they want to be able to do and also the way they want to be able to do the work. There's just a lot out there right now. And I see it like every day, you know, we spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, you know, in in connecting with people on LinkedIn, answering questions, jumping into different threads, you know, i know, writing for articles things like that. And I see a ton
still of movement around people moving industries, careers. We've continued to see a lot of organizations and companies you know, moving forward with plans around layoffs still. And I mean it's just there's a lot going on. So I'm not surprised one bit that there's you know, that there's some some I wouldn't say newness, but a there's a different thing going on than we've ever seen before in regards to like the jobs that people are accepting and how they're taking a
job and then taking a different job. I think that there's just a lot
of noise in the system right now that we've never experienced before. Right Well, if you look at people who are applying for jobs, you know, there's the there's the person who's out of work and needs a job, and then there's a person who is currently employed but they don't necessarily love where they are and they're looking to make a change, and so they're applying to and those are different people, but they are they still apply in most cases to
many many jobs. Because as we've seen, it is a numbers game out there. There's AI that runs that will filter out applications that don't have certain words that companies are looking for. Because let's be realistic, if you put a job out there and you know five thousand people apply for it, you
don't have the resources to read through five thousand resumes and applications. You have a program that runs that filters out everybody that doesn't have certain words or certain things in their resume or their employment history or their you know, their credentials, and then you go through you know, the top five or top ten
percent of those, and you move forward there. And because of that, a person who's looking for a job, in a lot of cases will apply to hundreds of jobs, hundreds of organizations in the time that it takes to
kind of, you know, make that jump or to become employed. And so if I'm doing this and I am in the process of hiring with a company, if I'm a hiring manager, I'm hiring somebody, it's pretty naive of me to think that this person is not interviewing with other places too, Like what's so special about my organization that says that the person I'm talking to
isn't looking at other places as well. If they need a job or if they're looking to exit their job, if they're smart, they're keeping their options open and they're trying to figure out where the best place is. And so it does make sense that people be in this process with multiple companies. So then it also makes sense that if you happen to be their first job offer, they're going to say yes if they're especially if they're unemployed, or if
they're really disliking the place they're at. But then let's say during that kind of transitional period, they get another offer from another organization that they like better. Well, what's to stop them from saying no to you and then taking that next one? If they have all these people kind of knocking at the door. And so I think that there's because the job market is tough. And I'm using air quotes here because it's tough right now. I think a
lot of organizations think that means that they hold all the cards. And really, if you have talent and you have skills that people are looking for, the job market is not tough for you. That you have a lot of options. If you are a talented, skilled employee that can bring a lot
to the table. And so what I want to ask you, Lorenzo, is have you ever offered a job to somebody They accepted, they went through the whole process, everything was great, and then before the day they started they reached out and said no, never mind, you know for knowing certain terms, Sorry, but you won't be seeing me again. So I want to ask you up at first, I'm wanna get up to word for one
of our sponsors. All right, Lorenzo, has anyone ever agreed to a job and you worked out all the details and it seemed like everything was great and then all of a sudden, it just didn't happen. I mean we're talking about me right right, Like, like, how could anybody tell me? No, Yeah, of course it's happened. Yes, it's happened,
Yes, I think. And this is again how this is kind of new in this space, is it's happened before, especially in the retail world, where where I've you know, worked with somebody all the way through an offer standpoint and in their current company had countered, right, and sometimes that company had countered with more money, maybe a new position, maybe some more promises,
whatever that might be. But I've had that that that happened to me, where we've gotten to that point of the offer and they came back and said, I'm going to have to decline after all of that work. What's been new recently that I've seen is what you explained earlier, which is somebody accepting the job and then starting to do the you know, not just the paperwork, but like the schedule of getting things going, and then them saying,
oh, sorry, I actually took a different job instead. Like that, that's relatively new, you know, every blue moon, maybe I've seen that happen where, especially in retail, where sometimes you'll do you know, temporary hiring dear in holidays and things like that. Well, then you understand, like somebody's looking for a part time job and it's a temporary job, and if they are looking for multiple places, you know, they kind of make a decision on what makes sense for them. But when it comes to
actual roles, you know, permanent roles, leadership roles. This is something new that that I have not really seen before where where it's been like, yes, I take I want the job, and then I've decided to take a different job somewhere else. I've seen that more recently, uh, with
with what's going on in the world, than I ever have before. Yeah, So if I'm thinking about as a hiring manager or a recruiter or someone and I want to kind of, you know, lessen the likelihood of this happening, I think there's a few things that people can do to kind of to lower this this instance. The first thing is, you know, inmployees
and potential employees are looking to have connections with their with their employers. They're looking to have kind of a process that says, you know what on an emotional level. This is the right place for me. This is where I want to be. It's not just a place to clock in and clock out and collect a paycheck and move on. There's such a bleed between work and personal life that they have to really want to be at a place in order to do their best work. And honestly, you should want them to want
to be there if they want to do their best work. You don't want someone who's just like running from something and finding you as a landing spot. They should want to be there. But creating that connection involves the candidate meeting with you if you're the hiring manager or the potential leader, not just this kind of vague and detached process with several people who get who they perceive is
making the decision for you, and I get it. You have to have people in there that can lower the likelihood of inherent biases that can exist in the hiring process. You want to make sure that it's not just one person making the decision. You have to get a lot of people involved. But if you are the person that this potential candidate is reporting to, you need to be talking to this person in the process to make sure that they feel
comfortable with not just the job, but with you. Because remember people leave leaders, they don't leave organizations, and so if you can create that connection with you as the leader, you're gonna have a better time with this. The second thing is once a person's accepted a job offer, the reality is that doesn't mean that they've accepted the job offer. It just means that you believe. You can kind of rest on your laurels and assume they're going to
start on Monday morning when they say they're going to start. But this is the time when a lot of people decide to take other job offers because they were also in the process with other organizations. So continue to reach out to them, say, hey, you know what. I know you don't start until you know, two weeks from now, but I would love to get together and have lunch and just chat. I would love to know what your expectations of me are as your leader. So if you have an hour for
lunch one day coming up, let's sit down and have a talk. You know, you want to make sure you're having these conversations with people in that interim so you don't let the doubt set in. You don't let them kind of think to themselves. Maybe I made the wrong decision going with this organization. I haven't heard them from them since I accepted the job offer. So there are things you can do. It's not going to stop it permanently,
but you can lessen it by creating that emotional connection. Yeah. I think that's great advice. And I think that in my kind of perspective of recruiting in a time that I spend talking to people in talent, especially in like leadership roles, that's actually a part of my process is like I want to have some dialogue and conversations outside of an interview process. I'd rather connect with
people when their job isn't open. Fer say, so, if I'm getting to know people, if I see some great behaviors, if I if I'm like this person may work well for me and my organization, that type of thing, I'm going to go approach them and say, hey, you know, this is who I am, this is what I do. You know,
I'd love to talk with you a little bit. Would you be open to having just a cup of coffee and discussing, you know, and just getting to know each other and seeing there's any interest there at all, And then that way you don't have this formality of process that's going to happen potentially, but you have the opportun to connect with the person to talk about what are they looking to achieve, not just you know, with a job, but like in life, in their career, what are things that are important
to them. You get a chance to really connect with someone to understand like not only are they aligned with values, but like how do they show up and discuss the work that they do when they're not in a interview process answering very specific questions And I think these are all things that if you're looking to avoid people making that last minute decision and just looking at job versus job, but considering the environment, the leaders, the connections, you're going to have
to put for some of that work on the front end to make that a deciding factor and how people make a decision. Sometimes I think that's spot on. I also think that there's this element of kind of disarming the process when you do that, too. And what I mean to that is that you know there are people who really know how to interview well, and they know
how to put their best foot forward. And I've been in situations where someone was hired and after words, I think this person is not like the person that we interviewed, right, And if you are a skilled interview were you can get through a lot of that. If you're a skilled interview if you know the right questions to ask, you can kind of see through some of the bs that people can put out there. But there are people out there
who are very good at this. And if you can have a personal connection with somebody that disarms them to the process, you are more likely to see the real them and the interview process to begin with, in those conversations that you're having, you're less likely to see that person who thinks they have to polish something up in order to present it to you, and you're more likely to see somebody who is more comfortable being the real them during that interview process
if you can kind of disarm that. So you're only serving yourself well to make sure you're getting the person that you think you're getting, but you're also once you get that person, you're also setting up to make sure that they feel good about it and that they're less likely to back out absolutely. And with that it brings us to the end of this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris and have a great day.