🤲 How to Keep Candidates Engaged After They Rejected Your Offer

Building a strong relationship is key to ensuring a specialist chooses your company or returns after rejecting your offer. Let’s explore how to do it effectively. Our approach is particularly useful for hunting senior specialists and executives.

📌 Prepare for offer negotiations from the first call

Before your initial call, research the candidates and employers market in this field.

During the introduction, it’s helpful to ask:

➤ “Why did you leave previous jobs?”
➤ “How will you evaluate a future offer?”
➤ “What are your expectations for the team, tasks, leadership, and financial aspects?”
And so on.

Revisit these questions at each stage of negotiations — going deeper each time, suggests Oksana Prutyanova, analysts and data scientists recruitment lead at NEWHR.

Track the candidate’s responses and how their priorities evolve. It will help you better understand what the candidate wants and how to tailor your offer.

📌 Build trusting relationships

If a candidate declines your offer, maintain periodic contact: check in on how things are going.

Example of initial contact while the candidate is still choosing where to work:

How are things going? Where are you interviewing? Have you accepted other offers? Why did you turn down other offers?

Later, make another connection:

How are you? How’s your search? Where did you end up working? 🙂 Who’s the lucky company?

After the candidate has worked a month at a new company:

How’s the adjustment? How’s the team? What are your first impressions? Is everything going well? 🙂 Is the company passing your probation?

Then after their probation period ends:

How did your probation go?

It’s important to maintain open friendly communication without being pushy.

🤔 Why so much effort?

Although a candidate preferred another company doesn’t mean they will be happy there. Promises made during hiring may not match reality. A manager the candidate liked might leave, or the team atmosphere could shift — anything could happen.

By keeping in touch, it’s easier to restart negotiations about joining your company.

💙 NEWHR Recruiting can help you find tech talent for your business needs. Fill out the form or email us at contact@new.hr