Management coach Brian Walch says hiring managers shouldn't disappear after a candidate accepts an offer. Keep monitoring through their notice period, watch for counteroffers, coordinate with HR on onboarding, and stay in touch until they're fully integrated. The hiring process doesn't end at acceptance.
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All right. Good morning. Fly the plane until it stops. Now, you might not be a pilot, but if you hire people, you need to know what it means to fly the plane until it stops. And that's what I'm going to explain in today's LinkedIn Live. I'm Brian Welch. I'm a management coach and consultant and I help technical consulting firms develop their managers and build leadership capacity. And I've been doing a series of LinkedIn lives on recruiting because it's such an important part of a manager's job. And today I'm bringing it in for landing. So let me explain that. First of all, they've said that the second greatest thrill known to man is flying. And landing is the first. And what happens when people are learning to fly? The instructor sitting there in the right seat, the students in the left seat. And landing is a stressful time. And so as soon as the plane touches down and you're on the Runway, it's tempting to just kind of let things go. And the instructor will be like, fly the plane until it stops. And they mean it because you can't become complacent just because you're on the Runway. There's going to be crosswinds coming, there's potholes. You, you're going to taxi and you're going to come at different angles and so the wind is going to be hitting you at different angles and all sorts of things can happen on the rollout and on taxing back to the tie down. So you fly the plane until it stops, until you know it's secure and ready to tie down. The same is true when you're hiring. You don't stop recruiting once they've accepted a position. You can't get complacent or assume it's all good and just go back to your normal routines. That's the temptation for managers. They're going to say, oh, they've accepted the job. Now I can go back to my day to day routine and, and, and HR will take care of the rest. Likely HR is taking care of the rest. They're going to be doing their, their processing, but you want to make sure you're still flying the plane until they are. That candidate is all the way through the hiring process, all the way through orientation, and securely in a well structured onboarding process. And that's something we'll be talking about in subsequent LinkedIn lives. But this is important because once they've accepted your job now, they have to go back and probably give notice to their existing employer and maybe they're going to be a couple weeks, but they might get some pushback when they do that. They might even get a counteroffer. They're going to be telling their friends and their co workers. Some of those may have some pretty big influence in their lives. And sometimes they have different opinions about what. Just what that decision was. Sometimes people get buyer's remorse. And of course, they've probably been applying to other jobs and those other jobs are still contacting them, maybe scheduling interviews. They might be doing interviews because they're still open to opportunities. So if someone's accepted and hasn't started yet, you want to be having regular communication with them. Like I said, hr. In a lot of situations, HR kind of takes over the process after they accept. And you want to know what are they doing and when is a good time for you to contact them. They might have a week or two weeks where they're not going to interact with them much. That's a good time for the manager to check in and just say how things are going, is the paperwork going all right? Talk to them a little bit about what the onboarding process is going to be like, maybe even what kind of projects they'll be working on. Answer any questions they have. You want to keep flying the plane, making sure they feel good about their decision. Now when they start, HR is going to, like, we do the orientation. Like, they're the ones that get them their computer and they're in the employee handbook and take them around and introduce them to people. You want to know what that process is like so you can pay attention to it. And, and if, if there's breaks in there, you know, feel free to, to interject and then get them into an onboarding process. And like I said, we'll talk more about that and why that's so important. But that, that transition from job offer to securely in a good onboarding process is where managers need to stay involved. They need to make sure that that process is good so the plane doesn't get wrecked, and also so that you can make sure that that employee feels good through the entire process, because that's often a very stressful time. All right, that's the LinkedIn Live for today. You've successfully recruited this candidate. You've hired a great candidate. They're going to make a big impact in your workplace. So make sure they get successfully transitioned into the organization and they start onboarding. Hiring is just getting the plane on the Runway. Once they accept you're on the Runway, but fly the plane until it stops. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. Thanks.
