5 Risk Factors that a candidate will renege on a job offer or not show up on Day 1. Part 1: Mental pulse

How do you spot someone during the job interview process who has a high chance of later flaking on you?
Because there ARE some telltale signs that tell you if someone is likely to pull a no-show later on.
So that’s what we’re going to cover in this video.

When someone reneges on your job offer, it means that it was not attractive enough, plain and simple. 

It has not met their needs. What kind of needs do job candidates have? According to the Five Pulse model, there’s mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and agility needs. 

​Let’s look at mental needs first - the needs for intellectual stimulation, career advancement, and learning new skills.

What are the risk factors that increase the likelihood that your offer may not meet their MENTAL needs?

1. The role requires skills that are in high demand. Anyone who has a lot of options because of their rare skills is more likely to drop you than someone unskilled. 
2. It’s a graduate role. We have shifted into a graduates’ market, with more and more entry level positions available. This makes people collect a string of offers yet continue their job search to find something better. 
3. They were not well prepared for the interview. Lack of research on the company, no curiosity during the interview, all those are signs that should give you pause.
4. They don’t have interesting insights. A lack of substance can often be papered over by charisma. So if you liked a candidate, ask yourself if their insights about the industry, their area of specialisation or other intellectually stimulating topics were actually interesting, even if you didn’t agree with them. 
5. There was an assignment element to the interview process, and the candidate was unwilling or slow to complete it. If you found that in the process, the candidate was slow to work on the task or you felt that they were upset that this would be part of the application, that’s another risk factor. Even if they then completed the task. 

Of course, these are only subtle signs. You will not be giving a job offer to someone who didn’t prepare at ALL for the job interview and didn’t have ANYTHING interesting to say. So this checklist is for those subtle edge cases, a word here and there, something small that didn’t feel completely right. 

By the way, if you want the FULL checklist which includes ALL the risk factors that make someone a likely no-show, just click below to download the PDF (no email needed).

the_hr360_no-show_checklist.pdf
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So, what are you supposed to do when one of these risk factors applies in your case? We will cover this in a later video in detail, but here I’ll mention it briefly: 

Basically, there’s three things you can do to hedge your risk against a no-show or reneg. 

1. One measure that’s totally underused is the direct addressing of the problem: Saying “Listen, John, I liked our conversations but I felt that you were a bit unprepared for the first interview. What do you think? Is this something that, in retrospect, you would agree with?” That can reveal how the candidate handles criticism, and it helps to bust through the formality in the job interview process. 
2. Get more face-time with them. For example, invite them for lunch with someone more senior than their role would be, so that they feel well taken care of. During the time together, pay attention to the conversation and their body language.
3. Keep other candidates warm. There are ways to do this ethically. 

We will discuss all of this in much more depth in a later video. 

In next week’s video, we will cover what are the signs from the physical and agility pulse standpoint that someone may become a no-show. 

I hope this was helpful, please make sure to add or follow me on LinkedIn, and click the button below to get notified when a new video comes out.
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