How to Pre-close More Candidates

Using candidate motivations for better results

Author

Joe Atkinson
March 28, 2024

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On with the wisdom! The below is taken from a Purpl learning session on pre-closing. The insights are from Chris Harrison who has spent 10+ years filling hard to find roles, including the top % of AI talent at Meta and now Causaly.

Data for specialist tech hiring shows a time to offer from pre-screen of 2.9-4.8 months. In a worst case scenario, a rejected offer and process re-start could double that number, costing our stakeholders (& recruiters) significant time.

Despite this only 12% of recruiters surveyed had a structured and consistent process to pre-closing.

Here are 4 key steps from Chris, to interact with candidates based on their true motivations, ensure their positivity increases throughout the interview process & ultimately improve your offer acceptance rates.

1. Understanding moving criteria really matters

Pre-closing is an agreement that if moving criteria are met, candidates will accept. Candidates will mostly only ever move jobs for 3 reasons:

  1. Location

  2. Team / Role

  3. Money

If we can’t improve at least one of those criteria candidates aren’t going to accept.

The right candidate may not be the best person on paper, but they have the skills and desire for the job, we can meet their compensation expectations, and there are no logistical hurdles to hiring them.

2. Working towards 100% candidate positivity

Each interaction you have should create an increase in candidate positivity. Think of it as a process of needing to get to 100% positivity for an offer acceptance. If positivity trends down at any stage/interaction, this is almost always terminal.

3. A.B.C - Always be closing (sorry 🙄)

Only 12% of recruiters pre-close at every stage and virtually 0 continually discuss the moving criteria.

If we don’t continually pre-close, we’re working based on old (and therefore potentially incorrect) data from the screen, leaving the potential for a nasty surprise at the offer stage.

Time to offer from role kick off can be months do we really expect nothing changes throughout the candidate lifecycle?

4. We’re not order takers, we’re are on a fact finding mission

Listen to what you’re being told and sometimes pay attention to what you’re not being told. Mix open and closed questions to uncover the 3 moving criteria.

Closed questions are usually not very useful when asked in isolation. They become a lot more effective when asked in pairs.

Paired Closed Questioning Example:

“Are you happy to work from the London office?” (answer = “yes”)

“So obviously we’re getting ahead of ourselves but assuming everything was ok with the interviews, team and comp and we offered you a role from our London office would you be happy to take that?” (answer = “yes”)

Thanks for reading! These steps have helped Chris consistently close hard-to-fill positions, hopefully there is some useful insight for your own closing process.

✅ That’s it for this week, we hope this was helpful! Please reply to this email with any feedback, we’d love to hear it.

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