Chad and Marc are two excellent sales engineer candidates… both had good engineering backgrounds and ability… our client company is one of the best in the country at what they do and they are expanding… they called us needing two sales engineers and were grateful to us for referring both Chad and Marc…
Chad and Marc both went into the initial interviews realizing that these were excellent opportunities and they both sold themselves really well, at least Chad did… from the beginning of our effort with Marc, he copped an attitude that “these guys need to come to me… I’m really good… I’m gonna play it cool… I’m gonna play hard to get…I’ll get a better offer that way”
We explained to both candidates that they needed to sell themselves at every step of the way… ask for the job and reminded them that they had nothing until they had an offer… Chad did exactly the right things…but Marc didn’t… Mark didn’t close the initial interview by asking “how do I stack up with the others that you were looking at” and “what’ll I need to do to get the job”… he didn’t send follow-up interview e-mails to the initial interview and authority for two days after the interview and, instead of doing what Chad did, which was call up the initial interview and authority two days after the interview and ask about next steps, Marc “played it cool” and waited for us to be told by the initial interviewing authority to arrange follow-up interviews with him…
Marc did the same thing after the follow-up interviews… he never “closed” the people doing the interviewing… and followed up two or three days later… he also kept reminding them that he had “other opportunities he was looking at”…
Interestingly enough, Marc was probably a better candidate than Chad, but he just wasn’t selling himself the right way… last Friday the company made offers to both Chad and Marc… Chad negotiated a great offer and accepted the job immediately…Marc told the hiring authority that he wanted to think about it two or three days and then he would let them know…in spite of his arrogance, the company still wanted to hire Marc… sometimes talent can take you a long ways
Marc told us that he had no other offers, no other prospects for offers, that he really wanted the opportunity but he still wanted to “play it cool”… we advised against this, but Marc insisted that he was doing it the right way… on Monday afternoon following the Friday the hiring authority made the offers, the hiring authority called us and said that they decided to resend the offer they made to Marc… it just plain bugged them that Marc handled the interview he process the way he did… we tried to explain that some candidates just do that kind of thing, etc. and we tried to salvage the deal… the truth is that the way Marc handled the situation really has nothing to do with his ability to do the job or effectiveness…
the hiring authority just couldn’t be convinced… and we understand…Marc was absolutely furious… he couldn’t believe that the company would rescind the offer the way they did… he then mumbled something about suing them… absurd!
The lesson is, don’t “play it cool”…this is a real painful lesson and it’s really sad…Marc called us two days after this came down and asked if he should call the hiring authority and ask if he can be reconsidered… the hiring authority wouldn’t return the three calls Marc made to him… Marc claims he’s learned his lesson and he will do better the next time…
A wise person learned by experience… a wiser person learns by others experience…
