Offer Shopping - from the lens of Shishir Shandilya

Have you ever gone on a trek? 

‍

On a trek for a breathtaking view–the clouds are low, it's misty, and you see hills.

‍

Excited to experience the view and feel the wind, you trek hard with a heavy backpack.

‍

Finally, you reach the top, but it is nothing like what you saw on Google. 

‍

It is crowded, sunny and the only thing that is taking your breath is the climbing.

‍

Do you know this feeling, HR readers? 

‍

The feeling of disappointment.

‍

The disappointment when you work hard to close a position with a candidate only for you to get know that they are shopping for offers?

‍

Discovering that a candidate was not sincere in their intentions can be disheartening and make all your efforts feel wasted.

‍

This frustration has been common lately among HRs and we wanted to dive deep into this. 

‍

We asked Shishir Shandilya for his thoughts on this.

‍

Shishir is the Director of HRBP at Cashfree. He was recognized as ET HR Emerging Leaders by Economic Times. 

‍

Read on to know his perspectives on offer shopping.

Getting the basics right

Before you do anything about offer shopping, you need to know the below numbers

‍

Offers rolled out → Acceptance of offers → Candidates joined

‍

1. Offers rolled out vs Offer acceptance
2. Offer acceptance vs Candidates joining

Knowing this helps you get a deep understanding of where you need to put effort. You can later average it out for a consolidated number.

‍

You can calculate monthly, quarterly, or annually for the entire company or department-based.

‍

For tech, engineering, and product teams, 70% and above is a good ratio 

For other teams 85% and above is a good ratio.

‍

However, it is important for HRs to get their hands dirty and find the ideal ratio for your company based on the industry and competitors. 

Why didn’t the offer shopper choose you?

Inferring why candidates are not choosing you is an important factor if you want to improve your joining ratio. Have honest conversations and find out the true reasons. They are just as important as exit interviews. 

‍

Most times employers are not meeting the candidate with their expectations on

1. Total rewards
2. Role, challenges, and growth

So here’s what you can do 👇

Regularly benchmark total rewards 

Stay on top of industry standards with compensation and benefits. Work with consultants like Mercer and Aon for salary benchmarking. Choose the one that caters to your competitors to get more accurate benchmarking reports. 

Go beyond the JD 

“I am looking for a better challenging role” is a common reason candidates give for changing jobs. Ask follow-up questions and try to understand what candidates are looking for and convey how you can offer them that. Have a clear plan on what they will be doing for two quarters and how the role can evolve. Help candidates visualize the role and growth with your company. 

‍

Additionally, candidates want to associate themselves with bigger and more popular brands. Although it is remotely related to HRs, you can try as much as possible to have a good employer brand. 

‍

People today are growth-focused and would love to know how smart their colleagues are and what is the culture like. Do talk about it to your candidates.

From my experience

Where there’s more demand, there’s more offer shopping. Today, there’s a good demand for product, engineering and tech roles. It is very likely for HRs to see a lower offer acceptance ratio in these teams.

‍

The goal is never to have a 100% offer-to-joining ratio. Unless you are not meeting ideal the offer-to-joining ratio, you don’t have to worry because there will always be candidates who will reject you.

‍

To increase your acceptance ratio you can do a few things in your reach

1. Offer competitive total rewards
2. Build an interactive and faster recruitment process
3. Don’t encourage counteroffers
4. Attract good candidates to have a pipeline. Helps when your best candidate rejects you.

At Cashfree we have an ‘Experience team’ that takes care of structured onboarding to increase the joining ratio

1. Increase touchpoints till joining (Office visits, lunch with the manager, talking to colleagues and business heads)
2. Personalize the touchpoints based on past work experience. (For someone moving from Outlook to Google, you can create a touchpoint for them to experience it for a seamless transition)
3. Have a scoring system to keep track of how engaged the candidate is. Lesser score informs you that the candidate is losing interest.

Based on your cost per hire, and how much you want to increase your offer-to-join ratio, you can create a budget accordingly.