A Rival Consultant Has Filled Your Vacancy: What To Do Next…

However good a recruiter you are, there will be many times throughout your career that a vacancy you are working on will be filled by another, rival consultant. This, of course, is part and parcel of recruitment, and you just move on, ready to fight another day surely? Well yes, but its best not to be so hasty. There is more to learn from the vacancies you lose than the ones you are successful with, so here are our 5 things to do if you’ve just lost out on filling that placement…..

Don’t beat yourself up.

Like we just said, losing a vacancy is part and parcel of recruitment. Whether they’re a new client or a client that you thought you had exclusivity with, there is no point getting down and dwelling on the failure, you need to do something proactive. This is where the next step comes in….

There’s no such thing as failure… only feedback

Get feedback from as many places as you can. Talk to your candidates and talk to your manager, their feedback is going to be crucial. First step though should be the hiring manager. Ask them for feedback.

– Why were your candidates not successful?

– Was your service up to scratch?

– What was it in the other consultant’s candidate that made them stand out?

Then, most importantly, ask the hiring manager the name of the successful candidate. Think they won’t tell you? Have you ever asked?

Finding out who was the successful candidate sets you apart from the competition. You’ll be surprised at how many hiring managers will tell you the name of the successful candidate, why wouldn’t they? If not, you’re a resourceful recruitment consultant, find it out! You can start to uncover some really valuable information about why you lost the vacancy.

Take a look at the person’s CV (you’re bound to find it on a job site) or their Linkedin profile. Compare it to the candidate you put forward. Whether it is experience, qualifications or something else, you should now begin to have a clearer idea of why this person got the job over your candidate. If it’s a company that recruit a lot of this type of particular role, you now have something more important… a benchmark to assess other candidates against when more vacancies arise.

Go back to the hiring manager

Don’t ever run scared, be embarrassed or feel like you’ve been muscled out by another agency. Go back and try to get a meeting with the company’s hiring manager. You may have lost out on that vacancy, but you can spin this entire scenario around. How? You can explain…..

– How you have learnt from the experience AND have been proactive in taking your understanding of their company and requirements forward

– How you now have a benchmark of EXACTLY what they require

– How you are a consultant that isn’t just about filling vacancies, you want to understand your client and provide solutions and this is what you are starting to do now

– How this makes you different from other consultants

Your proactive and feedback led approach will impress the manager, and you never know, they may even give you exclusivity on future vacancies. If not, you’ll certainly be in a stronger position to place candidates and you should eventually reap the rewards.

Backfill

Did you spot the opportunity we failed to mention in this piece? It’s to do with who the successful candidate is. They’ve got a new job, so what does that mean? They’ve just left somewhere, which means a vacancy! You know who they are now you might even have access to a copy of their CV or their Linkedin profile so get in touch with the company. You have a pile of candidates from the previous role who could be a perfect fit for this, so get onto it!

To be a successful recruitment consultant, you have to look for the positives and opportunities in everything. It’s not nice losing out on vacancies, but if you can spin them round to bring out the positives, you will always win in the long run.

Till next time,

Cheryl