The formula every recruiter should know… About Managing Expectations

Enrico Heidelberg
2 min readMar 22, 2021

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The formula every recruiter should know about managing expectations

Intro

I’m a strong believer of using technology/tools to work more efficiently and love and embrace the “open source” culture among recruiters/sourcers. This is my humble attempt to contribute back to the community.

Managing Expectations is underrated…

…and underrepresented in the recruitment community while it has so much impact on success!

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of emphasis on finding, searching, and engaging with candidates. Usually in markets where demand exceeds supply, and where there is a strong emphasis on pro-actively approaching passive candidates. For sure important!

I always felt there has been limited attention and exposure to what happens when you’ve stirred interest and the prospect has become a candidate. And especially in “closing” candidates and overall managing expectations. Of everyone, Hiring Manager, Candidate and Recruiter.

Not managing expectations causes unnecessary distress for all stakeholders involved, but mostly for recruiters. I want to share a formula that has been elemental in my approach in hiring over the last 18 years.

The Formula

Personally, the worst case scenario is when a (wanted!) candidate drops-out and I didn’t see it coming. An unwanted drop-out never fulfills me with joy, but if you anticipated on this scenario, you were able to manage your HM expectations, and your own, you might have already taken counter-measures.

The formula is not a goal at itself, the goal is: keeping control and anticipating on scenario’s.

TL;DR — Best Practices

Disclaimer

Special thanks to WeAreKeen for organizing a bunch of great (free) webinars and offering the platform to share my vision on this topic.

An even more special thanks to the two mentors who introduced me to this formula and imprint it into my way of working. Thanks to Guri de Blok & Marco Rinck

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