Today i had the stuffing knocked out of me
A couple of months ago someone we used to work with approached us about coming to work for us. It coincidiced well with where were are as a company. We have just enough customers to keep us busy but if we wanted to grow (of course!) then knew we’d need people so we could start delegating some of the day-to-day responsibilities and free up time for finding new customers, doing more with existing customers, marketing, process improvement and all those sorts of things to help you become bigger and better
We sorted out all the formalities and our new staff member has been working his notice period. We arranged everything he’d need to hit the ground running (new pc/laptop, equipment, software, phones, business cards, etc) and Monday 23rd was to be the big day and we had started making plans around this extra resource. I was personally very excited as it marked the next stage in our evolution as a company.
Today we got a phone call to say his current employer had offered him more money and agreed to change his job role so wouldn’t be coming to us.
I didn’t answer the phone but from the half of the conversation i could hear i could tell straight away. It was a real kick in the teeth.
It stuffs up lots of the things we had planned and feels like the last six weeks have been a waste. From an monetry point of view we will lose what we paid to get business cards printed and a mobile phone contract will be going to waste for a while. The rest will just be waiting for whoever we find instead. In the grand scheme of things thats not an awful lot of cash.
So what have we learnt?
From the cynical point of view, don’t mix friends with business. Harsh? Maybe? I was more gutted as i knew and trusted this person and maybe i’d have brushed it off easier if it had been some stranger
We are going to take the positives from this experience and learn from it. We’ll be looking to get someone else straight away and not feel sorry for ourselves. We wont take anything for granted until the person is standing in the office for their first day of work
Maybe things happen for a reason. Hopefully this will motivate us even more to be as successful as we can be and we’ll look back on the day we were let down as a turning point
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Unfortunately this is not an isolated story. I have heard it before and probably at some point in time I will hear it again.
However, I would like to point out that you were presenting the company’s point of view. For sure something in your friend’s personal situation has made him very vulnerable to the financial conditions. I would be curious to know if you are still in contact with this person.
Overall, there is no reason to get down because of this type of happening. It’s just as if one of your competitors steals a client. You get upset, but this is business. So, all you can do is just move on and find someone else.
I’ve had a candidate or two back out on me after they accepted. The best way I’ve found to handle it is to minimize the pain-points… not ordering the business cards, not tuning up phone contracts, etc. Other than that, I always have a frank conversation with them about their current employer, and what the likelihood of a counter offer is. I don’t get into bidding wars, and I do everything I can to prevent interviews, and negotiations from dragging on. I just put together a post on this if you want to check it out…
http://addicted-to-it.blogspot.com/2007/07/how-to-handle-job-candidates-who-back.html
Thanks Doriad
I was mostly disappointed as i was being let down by a friend. As i said in the post it might have been different if it was a complete stranger
Am i still in touch? It only happened today so we’ll see. I’m not one to hold a grudge though and do understand personal situations can change things.
It was so hard to take as it was such sort notice as he was supposed to start in less than a week
Hi Nick
Thanks for your post!
We had no plans in getting into a bidding war either so didn’t even attempt to offer more money
Good points about not getting business cards and phones. Common sense on reflection but it’s a lesson we’ve learnt now. We were so 100% this wasn’t going to happen maybe that got in the way
As i said in the post we’ll put it to one said and learn from it.There’s more than one way to grow!