If you’re recruiting from your former employer, what problems can you expect? What happens if you’re trying to recruit more than one former colleague at a time?

How do you keep the communication lines open when your candidate receives a counter offer from their employer?

Below is my journal entry from a key time when I was a VP of Sale Operations and Marketing, working through these business situations.

July 26, 2006

Hiring rock stars isn’t easy. Last Friday, I thought we had locked in my former colleague as my new Director of Channel Management. When I checked in with her on Monday, I discovered this wasn’t the case.

Chaos and Counter Offers

Her CEO of eight years wanted to keep her, vowing to counter our offer. She told me,

It was awful, just awful. I feel obligated to hear him out. Can you give me a few days to work it out? I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t listen to his counter offer.

Of course, my company wants her to do the right thing. I checked in with her on Tuesday and then again on Wednesday. Finally today (Thursday), I sent her an email, letting her know that I admired her willingness to leave gracefully, on the best terms possible; however, I needed an answer by the end of the day. She called me up by 5:00 pm to check in.

With annoyance and frustration in her voice, my candidate said,

The CEO’s on vacation, but he’s trying to put something together for me to review. He’s gone around his executives and over their heads. I hear there’s a problem at that level. They’re disagreeing on the counter offer.

But then her tone softened. I heard a hint of uncertainty as she asked me,

Your company hasn’t changed your mind about me? I can make the decision right now if you asked me to.

I replied,

No, that won’t be necessary. You’ve given your company until early Friday morning. Call me around Noon. Hopefully you’ll know what you’re going to do. I have another key hire that I’m trying to close on, but I want to be able to communicate the right configuration our team, so I don’t have to reverse myself.

She became worried after I mentioned the potential hire, so I added,

Don’t worry; we’re still excited about you. I just need to know what to tell the potential hire.

Do we extract her with a black ops team?

My candidate became relieved and said,

My husband told me that your company has shown us what you’re culture is really like. You’ve been up front, patient, and healthy during this process, while my current company’s showing their true culture. I’m ready for a change.

I thanked her by saying,

I admire your courage, good luck tonight and tomorrow morning. Any decision is fine and I’ll support whatever you do. If you take their counter offer, make sure that it really moves you up the ladder, positioning you well, as your company merges with its sister companies. Everyone’s running for cover, other execs and your CEO, so make sure your counter offer protects you somehow.

Keeping the Recruitment Process Secretive

Meanwhile, my CEO and my candidate’s current colleague/top Sales person have been talking. My CEO’s assignment for me was to get her compensation requirements, which I did. All we need to know is what job to give her. While on the road, he’s called me once a day to find out if my new Channel Director’s on board or not.

Frankly, the top Sales person wants the job, but is willing to move into anything. She really wants that Channel Director position. If my new Channel Director does join us, it will be huge for us in securing the top Sales person.

Talk about keeping secrets. My company’s been great about compartmentalizing these two candidates. So far, they haven’t find out about each other.

As the World Turns

I had no idea there would be so much secrecy during my recruitment process. I still don’t have answers for these questions:

• Will my new Channel Director candidate finally say, “Yes?”
• Will I ever be able to talk with my former boss, after dealing with her own CEO, who’s trying to counter and retain my Channel Director candidate?
• If I do talk to my old boss, how angry will she get if we’re successful in poaching her rock star sales person?
• When can we get the rock star person to join us?
• Will our key Channel partner really acquire us?

Food for Thought

As you can see, recruiting former colleagues and rock stars is a challenging process. Recruiting two people within the same company requires an extra level of secrecy.  As a manager, your job is to keep confidences between you and each candidate. If anyone’s cover gets blown, then it could have serious repercussions. It would be unfortunate if their bosses found out they were looking for jobs or if they found out about each other.

If you are recruiting a Rock Star, you can expect that person’s employer will try to counter the offer. All you do is have patience, giving your candidate the space they need to make the right career choice.

The Smart Lemming Diary is a series that chronicles a journey of laid-off worker, who becomes a Vice President of Sales Operations & Marketing for a small entrepreneurial healthcare technology company. For previous entries in this series, click here.  For the first diary entry, click here. For the highlighted Smart Lemming Diary entries, click here.

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