Would You Be Willing to Guarantee a New Hire One Year’s Worth of Pay and Benefits?

“People don’t want more choices. They want to be more confident in the choices they make.”

– Scott Galloway

It’s hard to hire not because there isn’t enough talent. There are all kinds of talent. In fact, there has never been a time in our lives where it’s been easier to actually find that talent and connect with that talent!

The technology and access we have to candidates have never been better. So, why is it so damn hard to hire!?

Candidates are fearful of making a bad decision. I might not love my current job, but at least I know what I have. I know the good and the bad. If I move and make a change, I’m not 100% sure of what I’m getting myself into.

So, would your organization be willing to take that fear away from me? 

Just take it clean off the table. If you take our job, we know it’s a stressful decision, we’ll sign a contract where we will play you a guarantee one year’s salary and benefits, no-fault. Meaning, at any time in the first year, if you, or we, decide this just isn’t working out, we’ll pay you the balance of that first year’s salary. It’s a no-risk offer to come to work here!

Would you do that? Why or why not?

If we do our jobs really well, in terms of sourcing, screening, assessing, vetting, and selection, this is really a low-risk proposition for the company, and it might actually help us land some of the best talent that is just a bit more conservative in their decision making. Think about who is naturally conservative in their thinking? Engineers, highly intelligent, logical people like scientists of all types, medical professionals, accounting types, legal types, etc.

You know those hard to land hires!

The dirty little secret of doing something like this is it’s basically almost no risk because most professional hires, given a proper courting process, don’t leave within twelve months. You wouldn’t do this with high volume hiring, but you could do it with your hard to find, low volume hiring.

What do you think? What am I missing? Why would our executives support this or hate this? Hit me in the comments.

6 thoughts on “Would You Be Willing to Guarantee a New Hire One Year’s Worth of Pay and Benefits?

  1. Great concept. Executive search firms believe in their process and provide a 1-year guarantee. This is a great twist on that concept. Keep the great ideas coming Tim!

  2. Great idea Tim, but will employers be willing to buy into it? I wish they would, but I doubt they will until somebody puts a gun to their heads and says, “I’m going to make you an offer you can’t refuse…”

  3. I think this is intriguing and could work in many occupations. However, I work in healthcare, and the idea of offering this to my RNs, PTs, MTs, etc, terrifies me. An RN could take us up on this offer and months later take another job across the street or down the road. The way nurses are already hopping from one employer to another, I would be very nervous to offer this incentive. They could really cash in!

    • I have a feeling most wouldn’t because most of us have this internal compass that would make us feel awful for taking advantage. If anything, I think it might strengthen the relationship even more. If you have great compensation practices in healthcare, you shouldn’t have massive movement.

  4. I love the idea and think it would be very successful in nudging some of that talent over the decision fence. However, I believe the reason that companies wouldn’t adopt this, although they likely won’t admit it, is that they just don’t have enough confidence in their interviewing process. If they did, this is a no-brainer.

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