Use This Simple Test to Determine If a Candidate Will Accept Your Job Offer

Hiring the best talent, whether active or passive, requires exceptional recruiting skills. This is especially true today with turnover accelerating, companies getting into bidding wars for the strongest people, and candidates being offered multiple opportunities, with the biggest compensation package often winning the battle. Unfortunately, if the candidate doesn’t buy what you’re selling, the process begins anew.

To stop the churn and close more offers, the key is to uncover and address a candidate’s concerns and objections at every stage in the recruiting process. Start by converting the strongest active and passive candidates into interested and serious prospects as the first step. The second step is convincing this group to become serious candidates and then converting them into those who are ultimately hired.

I make the contention that a good recruiter should never be surprised if an offer is rejected or accepted. In fact, you should never make an offer until you’re 100% sure it will be accepted and that the candidate will not shop your offer around or accept a counteroffer. You can do this by testing every aspect of the offer before formalizing it in writing. Here’s how to do that:

How to test if a candidate is really serious about your job

Assuming the candidate has indicated serious interest after the first round of interviews, further testing their enthusiasm for the role could be as simple as asking this question: “When do you think you could start if we could put together an acceptable offer?”

There are several other tests that help gauge interest that you can use before this point, but what I call “the start date test” is a great one to cut straight to the chase. If the candidate gives specific details about a start date, it’s a sign that they’re quite interested. If they’re vague or noncommittal, it’s a good sign that they’re not too serious about your role.

However, once you’ve identified a person who is a likely finalist and interested in your position, ask the person on a scale of 1 to 10 how your job ranks in comparison to other opportunities that they’re now considering. Define a 10 as a job the candidate clearly sees as superior to everything else being considered from both a short- and long-term perspective. Describe an 8 or 9 as a job that is of serious interest and a 6 or 7 as a more remote possibility.

If you’ve done your sourcing and interviewing properly, the candidate will likely rank your opening somewhere in the 8-to-9 range. Next, ask what they would need to know to make your role a 10 or the best offer among all the roles they’re considering, including a potential counteroffer.

The 1-to-10 test can chart the path to a successful hire

With this 1-to-10 test, you now have a sense of your chances of hiring the candidate and what you need to do to increase your odds. As long as the candidate is seriously interested, they’ll likely now ask for more information, including more details about the role, the leadership team, available resources, opportunities for career growth, and the compensation and benefits package. Regardless of what information they’re looking for, now you know what you need to address to close the deal.

Closing upon a concern is a common sales technique that can be used to test the validity of any issue raised by the candidate. It’s comparable to putting the issue in the parking lot to see if the concern is legitimate or not. For example, if the candidate is concerned that the resources available might be insufficient, say something like, “If we can address this issue to your satisfaction, would you be willing to become a finalist for this role?” If the candidate is vague about making a soft commitment at this point, you can likely assume the concern is a smokescreen for a bigger problem. Of course, if the candidate agrees to this condition, you need to clearly express how you’ll address and solve the issue that they raised.

If you perform these tests and ask these questions during the interview process, you should never be surprised if an offer is accepted or rejected. More importantly, never formalize the offer until everything about it has been discussed and agreed upon as a condition for proceeding. Too many recruiters gloss over these tough discussions and lose out on hiring the best for preventable reasons. The best recruiters, on the other hand, proactively seek out any of the candidate’s red flags about the role and address them one by one.

It’s important that when it comes to hiring the strongest talent, the end game is not sourcing and not interviewing, it’s closing the deal on fair and equitable terms.

*Photo by Angelina Litvin on Unsplash

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