“It’s not always rainbows and butterflies
It’s compromise that moves us along…”
-Maroon 5
To be more precise, it’s compromise that moves recruiting along.
Recruiting is all about selling, and on both sides of the sale the recruiter is working to facilitate (hiring managers and candidates) is a laundry list of needs for the position. Candidates have a certain salary, workplace culture, list of job duties and more in mind; hiring managers have a certain candidate profile, their own salary expectation, and skillsets in mind.
Many times, multiple items on these two sides won’t match up, and it’s easy for the recruiter to know it’s not going to work out. But, every so often, almost all items on both sides match up, you as a recruiter know it’s a great match, but there’s that one item that the hiring manager and candidate can’t see eye to eye on. For the most part, this will never be about job duties or company culture—those are two things that pretty much have to be wholeheartedly agreed to on both sides. Salary, work from home days, workday start/end time—these are all things that aren’t breaking points for a perfect fit, but hiring managers and candidates could still find themselves at odds about.
And it’s cases like these where your role as a negotiating recruiter comes in.
Compromise Strategies to Use For Helping Candidates and Hiring Managers Find Common Ground
- Meet in the middle. It’s the oldest compromise strategy in the book—get both sides to give a little and end up with a perfectly even compromise. For example, if the candidate wants a salary of $70K and the hiring manager is insisting on $60K, suggest to both parties a compromise of $65K. Or, if two items are up in the air (such as a discrepancy in salary wishes and PTO wishes), see if one side is willing to give on one if the other side will give on the other.
- Make it an offer that can’t be refused. If you use your best judgment and feel like one party is demanding too much, position it to them. Say a hiring manager just refuses to budge on giving a work from home day. Use your negotiation skills to lay out why the candidate is perfect otherwise, how a work from home day makes sense for the role (if it does), and why it makes more sense to give on that than letting the ideal candidate go and starting again from ground zero.
- Tap into concessions. For whatever reason, maybe your hiring manager 100% cannot budge on salary but the candidate’s wishes aren’t matching up. See if there’s something else the hiring manager could offer, like extra PTO or work from home days, and take that offer back to the candidate. With something a little sweet on the side, maybe the candidate can handle not getting the salary of their dreams.
A perfect fit for the role doesn’t mean all boxes are checked on both sides, but the compromise strategies can help you as a recruiter manage those discrepancies and seal the deal.