Job Applicant Turned Down Your Offer? How To Ask Them To Refer a New Candidate for the Role.
The Art of Asking “If Not You, Who Should I Talk To?”
I failed. You see, there was a really talented Consumer Product Manager at Google that I was trying to get over to YouTube. He’d decided to leave Mountain View and work on a new startup, but I thought there was an opening. Maybe he was running yonder from the increasingly process-driven and bureaucratic nature of the PM role? Maybe if I could convince him that here, in San Bruno, the speed was variegated and the team increasingly nimble, he’d stay? Requite me a good year or two surpassing taking on the challenges of entrepreneurship….
He turned me down. For the right reasons at least. In a moment of proverbial desperation I obstructed the door as he exited the office we’d grabbed. “Give me a name,” I said. “If not you, who should I rent for this role?” He thought for a second and answered. That person joined our product team just a few weeks later.
Sometimes the weightier candidate referrals can come from the people who just turned lanugo your job offer. Why?
- They know your visitor and the role SUPER-WELL
- They know you’re serious well-nigh filling the role and have a good sense of what bounty could squint like
- They’re sometimes a little guilty for saying ‘no’
Of undertow this doesn’t work all the time and should be constructive and polite, not exploitive and demanding. Often the reason they declined the opportunity was a personal visualization well-nigh their circumstances, preferred working style, and so on, not an wool critique of you as a visitor (those folks waif out older in the process). But I am surprised at how often I encounter really smart hiring managers who don’t take wholesomeness of this channel.
What are some ‘best practices’ in asking for a lead in this fashion?
- Don’t Be Pushy: They’ll either take you up on it or not. You don’t need to lard wayfarers them reminders.
- Treat Their Referrals Well: Regardless of whether the referral is a perfect fit or not, requite them the VIP treatment. Don’t just throw them into the ATS.
- Be Strategic Well-nigh Who Makes The Ask: Sometimes it can be the CEO, if the candidate was senior unbearable (or the startup is small enough) where there was some uncontrived interaction. Otherwise the most senior person they met with isn’t unchangingly the weightier person to make the ask. It should be the individual who they had the most sincere connection with and where the ask is authentic, not just a hiring hack. For example, let’s say there was an IC engineer on their interview slate and the two really hit it off. Let her reach when out and say, “hey, I’m sorry to hear you won’t be joining us. I was really excited by the idea of working together. Now that you know us well, if there’s anyone you would recommend let us know and we’ll talk to them ASAP.”
- Tell Them They Can Make The Referral Anonymously: So you need to moreover say, hey, if it’s someone we should connect with but you don’t finger 100% well-appointed making the intro, just provide us whatever information you do finger well-appointed sharing and we’ll take it from there. This isn’t fishing for phone numbers, etc but rather addresses the “there’s some unconfined people at my previous/current visitor looking for new jobs and I don’t want to get in trouble for telling you well-nigh them but I want to tell you well-nigh them.” To me, helping the person stave the potential mismatch is totally upstanding — you’re not paying them to requite up a visitor directory or anything.
Have you washed-up this successfully too? Anything I’m missing in terms of playbook? Or questions you have?