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Candidate Did A No Show

Years later, I’m still recovering from the anger.

My candidate did a no-show on day 1. It was in April 2022.

What’s a no-show?

A no-show in recruitment industry is when a candidate does not show up on day 1 of work after accepting the job offer formally (aka in writing).

In Singapore, no-shows by candidates are pretty rare. I didn’t know of this term until I was doing recruitment for another client for their Thailand office. Then I was “warned” that in Thailand, no-shows are very common and I shouldn’t celebrate too early.

I half believed it and secretly prayed I won’t get that “experience”.

To my joy, I didn’t have any no-show for my Thailand-based recruitment projects.

Luck was with me until 2022…

Let me share the story, my rant and then the important learning points.

The candidate in question (fear not, I’m not going to publicly shame him) was a senior professional. In his 40s, he had a stable career in engineering before he decided to go into another field.

When I approached him for the new role, he was a bit hesitant but decided to do the interview as he was a strong fit (technically) for the role’s requirements.

Also, he was also thinking of returning to his original industry.

His interview was cleared, the hiring manager loved him and we proceeded to make an offer despite his 3 month notice.

The first warning came but I was oblivious.

He wanted to continue as a part time adjunct lecturer even after joining the new company.

The reason is because he wanted to provide continuity to the course work he helped to build.

Now, that’s a strong sense of responsibility and on most days and in other situations, I would have celebrated that kind of intent.

However, I gave him some heartfelt advice and my advice was to maximize the 3 month notice to ensure there would be a smooth handover to the receiving colleague.

When it comes to career transitions, I advocate a clean cut which is dissimilar to the burning of bridges. By clean cut, this entails doing a perfect (or almost perfect) job of ensuring all handover work is properly dealt with.

This is good for two reasons.

The ex-colleague can take on smoothly from there.

The candidate can also move on without any lingering concern.

In short, that’s the basic expectation of professionals. We are not expected to stay forever and anyway that is no longer an option from corporates.

So anyway, after the heartfelt talk, I was greatly surprised when he insisted on negotiating with the new employer about his intent to continue adjunct lecturing.

In short, holding 1.5 “jobs” at the same time.

At that point, I seriously doubted the client would accept such a proposal. I wouldn’t if I were them because the focus is diluted and lecturing isn’t an easy job when you examine all the behind-the-scenes preparation.

I was surprised a second time when the client came back with an uncontested yes to this unusual request.

“Well, lady luck is with me” I gleefully thought.

Without further thought to the matter, all sides inked on the agreement and the start date is set 3 months away to allow the candidate to complete the full notice period.

Throughout that 3 months, I consistently kept in touch with the candidate as part of my usual routine. The work is never done until the candidate is safely onboarded. This is my commitment to both sides, not just to the client.

The candidate did not show any telltale signs and everything went just as planned until a week before the start date.

He did a MIA (Missing In Action).

No amount of texting or calling could reach him. Even the client’s HR tried to reach out upon my plead, and it came back naught.

On the actual start date, I had almost given up hope that we would ever hear from him.

That’s when a message came in from him at 6 am. It was brief and to the point. After deep consideration, he decided to stay where he was and thanked us for our time.

No apology, no sense of guilt that this was a terrible act of unprofessionalism that reflected badly on his behavior and cost us 3 months of lost time. We would have tried to find another candidate if he made his decision early.

When I replied with a request to do an exit call since I sensed he wouldn’t change his mind, he didn’t even reply. Then he blocked me from his phone.

My client was informed of the shocking update but since we couldn’t get to the candidate for over a week, they saw it coming but were curious to the reasons for this “sudden” change of mind.

Till today, I still didn’t have the answer. I did what I could and that is to move on, but a bit wiser from that day.

Writing this piece actually brought up ill emotions. That’s how infuriating it was.

Yet it would be a bigger loss to just end with frustration. Frustration has never benefitted anyone.

Here are some valuable learning points and probably only an incident of such “magnitude” can bring these learnings out so memorably:

1. Be careful when your candidate has lingering attachment for their current job. It’s not wrong but they may actually be NOT READY to move at all but doesn’t know how to articulate it firmly. You got to figure this out on your own and don’t live on false hope.

2. When you have a counter offer from candidate that’s unreasonable (and you know it), do not fear but be the first one to question it fully. It’s our job as recruiters to hold the fort so that our clients benefit from our foresight and guts to screen in only those who are the best and READY.

3. Do not live on past disappointments. It took me a while to move on and I actually kept that SMS reply from candidate, reliving that moment of anger over and over for months! There’s no point. Blacklist if necessary and move on. There is no need to hold it in the heart and slow yourself down.

No-shows suck.

I hope you won’t ever get in front of one and that’s why I shared this story and the learning points.

If any of these are similar to what you’re going through now, it’s time to re-evaluate the situation and cut to the chase. You save yourself and your client from frustration, and an earlier re-direction of resources to finding the right candidate.

Peace! ✌️

p.s. Thank you to everyone who DM and booked a coaching call with me in January. It was great to e-meet all of you. I still have slots for February if you want to get better sales for your recruitment business.

p.p.s. A warm welcome to everyone who subscribed The Solo Recruiter since last week! You are now a part of this community that support one another to achieve greater results in recruitment business. 🎉

Let’s connect on LinkedIn as well!

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