Career progression is welcome, but what happens to our business relationships when a candidate we’ve placed decides to move on?

We received a new job vacancy from one of our clients yesterday, as someone that we placed a couple of years ago has decided to move on.  Our client would love to keep this person on board, but rather than negotiate a counter-offer and risk losing them anyway, they have accepted the resignation and wished them all the best.

This leaves us with the task of finding a replacement, of course, but that doesn’t mean that the person we placed previously will be forgotten.  In fact, as the client rated them highly, and they did a good job during their time with them, this is definitely someone we would like to work with in the future.  We never forget a good candidate and tools like LinkedIn make it much easier to keep in touch with people, or even look up candidates that we haven’t had contact with for a while and find out where they are working now.

It is often the case that candidates who we place at a junior level within a company will end up as IT managers or software development managers or even directors – and if we have maintained a good relationship with them then hopefully when the time comes that they need to recruit staff, they’ll know exactly where to come, and they will have first-hand experience of our thorough process.

So when someone moves on for a good career opportunity we wish them well for the future – there is every chance we will cross paths again further down the line.

Keep in touch, don't burn your bridges, and remember - the world is smaller than you think.