Here’s the scenario:

You have an opening and you do your recruiting thing.  You find a candidate and low and behold they are great!  What luck!? You think to yourself. The hiring manager is going to thrilled. Boy, my job is easy!

Do I need to even go on?

You set up the interview with the hiring manager.  She also thinks the candidate is great.  Done deal, you think to yourself.  Then ‘it’ happens.  The hiring manager, she does that thing they do, those hiring manager types, she says that statement we don’t want to hear:

“Let’s take a look at a couple more before we decide.”

Bam!

Just like that, this job went from being easy to being horrible!  You found her Mr. Right and now she wants to see two more Mr. Rights!  Doesn’t she know, Mr. Right only comes around once!?

Grizzled Recruiting Veterans know what I’m talking about.  Finding Mr. Right too fast is a killer.  So, how do you get around this?  There are two ways, neither of which is preferred over the other:

1. Hold Mr. Right and show them Mr. and Mrs. Wrong.  The problem with this is that while you’re messing around showing the hiring manager Mr. and Mrs. Wrong, Mr. Right might just find Mrs. Right Job for him and you’re done holding hands with Mr. and Mrs. Wrong – with a hiring manager saying “I want Mr. Right – Go find me Mr. Right!”

2. Present Mr. Right, and present Mr. and Mrs. Wrong soon after.  This works about 75% of the time if you have secondary candidates waiting to go – timing is everything with this.  Hiring Manager sees Mr. Right.  Wants to see who else might be on the market. You quickly show them Mr. and Mrs. Wrong.  Hiring manager makes quick decision to go with Mr. Right.

Either way getting a hiring manager to understand the market and what they have can sometimes be a sales job!  Too many hiring managers believe you can present them a slate of Mr. and Mrs. Rights!  When in reality you might know that you got lucky finding one Mr. or Mrs. Right – and the chances of finding more are slim to none.  Ah, hiring managers…you can’t live with them and you can’t legally shoot them.