by Simon Parkin

One of the most important steps in the recruitment process is the offer stage – yet most companies don’t invest the appropriate amount of training and resources into this critical recruitment phase. Success in Recruitment must be defined mainly by the outcome – the Hire. In working closely with a large number of clients over the past year and closely analyzing the state of their Recruitment function with our diagnostic model, the offer stage is definitely one of the larger Recruitment capability gaps we encounter.

As Recruiters, we need to look at this phase as “closing the candidate”, and put the same importance the Sales function puts on “closing the deal”. An organization can have best-in-class sourcing channels but if they are unable to have their top external talent accept their offers and actually start with the company then they have failed. You aren’t classified as a top Salesperson by your company if you haven’t impacted the bottom line and closed deals so why should this be any different for Recruiters when it comes to closing the candidate.