Have you ever come across a term silver medalist in recruitment? If not, continue reading this article.

I am going to tell you who sliver medalist are and why you should nurture them.

Silver medalist is a mode of expression for candidates who were only a few stages away from being hired in the first place.

There could be several reasons for that, such as when a candidate is either overqualified or under qualified for an open position, or the candidate has taken up a new role elsewhere.

But dropping a candidate from the hiring process due to red flags is a different story. If that’s not the case, I would highly recommend not to let your efforts go to waste as you must have invested your time in knowing a candidate well.

Let me tell you an instance, in my previous company, I was hiring to fill a lead position. I found a great candidate and asked the tech team to vet his technical skills. I got to know that he was best suited for a senior developer verses a lead role.

I went back to the candidate and told him the exact reason and asked if he would like to be reconsidered for any future opportunities. As I didn’t have any senior developer opening at that point, he was okay with it.

Subsequently, I tagged him under the applicant tracking system(ATS) as “consider for future roles” with the specific feedback that I received on him from the tech team.

This activity is important, even if anyone else reviews his profile, they would know a candidate’s previous interview history before they approach him.

I stayed in touch with him by regularly sending the company events related to his skills. A year later when we had a senior dev position opened, I approached him and asked if he would be interested. I found that he was not happy with the kind of project he was working on and therefore agreed to appear for an interview with us.

Luckily, he made it through the final interview and we hired him within 20 days from the time the position was opened.

My only intent of letting you know this is to highlight the importance of re-engaging with your second-choice candidates or anyone who might fit perfectly well in some other role. This would increase the chances to fill your open positions faster.

Hope you got some insights from my story.

If you still have any questions regarding silver-medal candidates, reach out to me at nikita.mehrotra@therecruitmentinsights.com .

I would love to help:)

Nikita