5 Tips for Understanding Your Candidate’s Motivations and Closing More Offers

Their goal is to not only find you the best candidate for your job, but also to make sure the candidate landed their dream job and will be happy with your company long-term.

And the other 47? Well, its also in their best interest to make a great match because they want to make sure that you’re satisfied – particularly if they have a money back guarantee in their contract.

So, any contingency recruiter worth their salt knows that it’s just as important to identify motivations and requirements from candidates as it is to collect job requirements and culture information from your company.

Moreover, they will also understand the importance of clearly communicating those motivations with you, and following up with the candidate throughout the hiring process to ensure that they feel their needs are met.

Here are 5 tips to do just that:

1. Make sure the recruiter identifies the candidate’s motivations early in the vetting process – ideally before they are even submitted. If it’s just not going to be a good match, you’re better off if the recruiter waits for a better fit, rather than wasting everyone’s time.

   For instance, if the candidate’s first priority is work-life balance, but everyone at your company puts in long hours, you’re probably not going to convince the candidate to accept an offer. Make sure your recruiter knows what you can offer a candidate, and sticks to only submitting candidates that are a good match.

2. You should then touch on how your company fits the candidate’s requirements throughout the interview process. For instance, a candidate interested in career development should be informed of any training programs and education budget available at your company, and should be matched with an internal interviewer with similar goals (and successes).
3. Following each round of interviews, the recruiter should follow up with the candidate to find out how it went – including if they feel it will be a good fit, and if they have any reservations about the opportunity.

   Any issues should be addressed through the recruiter, as well as through your company, to ensure that the candidate is comfortable. For instance, if the candidate is concerned that your company doesn’t have the career advancement opportunities they’re looking for, offer to set up a meeting with one of your employees who has advanced in your company.

4. Once you’ve decided to extend an offer, your recruiter should pre-close your candidate to reinforce that it will be a good fit, ask if there are any final reservations, and to see what it would take to get them to accept your offer.

   In today’s candidate-driven market, the candidate could have received another offer which would up the stakes, or they may have been simply holding off for the offer to ask for additional vacation time for a pre-planned trip. Whatever the case may be, this is the time to get it all sorted out to ensure that your offer is accepted without a hitch.

5. When you deliver the offer, make sure you include all of the information discussed throughout your hiring process. This includes salary, health benefits, and vacation time, as well as any other details you had discussed around career development and advancement, work-life balance, etc.

A key thing to mention here is that you don’t trick your candidates into believing you are a good fit for them, when you know that you’re not. It won’t take long for the candidate to realize that they’ve been duped – at which point they’ll leave, and you’ll be in a worse place than where you started. Not only will you have a longer job vacancy and higher recruitment costs, you could do irreparable damage to your employer brand if the candidate shares their negative experience.

It’s really in everyone’s best interest to ensure a great match between your company and candidates, so follow these tips and you’ll be well on your way.