In Silicon Valley’s overheated job market, it’s no longer a given that a candidate who has accepted a job will show up for work.
Take the Web developer at a Bay Area Internet start-up who recently accepted a job and was promptly besieged by recruiters begging him to go on more interviews. He agreed, got a better offer and called the first company to say he wouldn’t be coming after all.
“Their reaction was `business as usual,”‘ he said. “The guy said, `We didn’t really think you’d come here.”‘
While some candidates and recruiters say backing out of an accepted offer still carries career risks, many observers say scenarios such as this are increasingly common in the competitive atmosphere that suffuses the Bay Area.
“It’s a new era, and everyone’s a free agent,” said Bob Lee, chief executive of Manpower Staffing Services/California Peninsula in San Jose.
The rules of the recruiting game, indeed, are changing.
Salim Virji, a software developer at a San Francisco Internet start-up, said his company has filled 10 engineering positions in the past six months. Three times, an engineer has signed on, then had a change of heart before the first day.
“I was amazed the first time it happened, annoyed the second time,” Virji said. “By the third time, I realized that people are just getting other offers, or are finding something more suited to their interests.”
As a result, companies are going to great lengths to make sure that candidates who say they’re joining actually do–sending champagne to the home of a candidate who has just accepted a job, for example, or inviting new executives to meetings before they officially start.
Even those who say they haven’t had candidates change their minds are taking no chances.
“In the old days, we would say, `Send them some material, get them working and have people call and congratulate them,”‘ said Gretchen Lewis, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, an executive search firm in Menlo Park, Calif. “Now we’re increasingly orchestrating a program to ensure that [really] happens.”
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John Rosica, president of Management Recruiters International of Silicon Valley, in San Jose, tells his clients to invite their new hires in for meetings, get them business cards and publicly announce their appointment.
“The more they see the emotional commitment extended by the employer, the more embarrassing it is if they don’t show up,” Rosica said.
Another common tactic for companies trying to hold on to their new hires is to get candidates to start–officially or unofficially–as quickly as possible after they accept an offer.
At Everdream, a company in Mountain View, Calif., that sells computer services to small businesses, the work begins the instant someone accepts the offer.
“It wasn’t, `I accept, and I’ll start in two weeks,”‘ said Lisa Venosta, who recently took a position as a senior sales coordinator at Everdream and has been attending evening meetings while finishing her current job. “It was `I accept, and we need to get me up to speed immediately.”‘