SmartFin Services

Why I said I would not recruit him again

• Posted by admin on July 10th, 2009 filed in Uncategorized
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Many a time, I get calls from independent agencies verifying facts about our ex-employees. Usually questions like period of employment, behavior etc. are asked. I don’t usually answer too many negatives, thinking “wherever an ex-employee is, let him be well and good”. Once, I got a call from an agency and they wanted to verify an ex-employee named Ganpath (name changed to protect privacy). The lady asked me if he was working here for this period and I said yes because that was true. Then the lady said “I’ll send you an email, if you can reply to that, it would be great”.
I got an email from her in a couple of hours. I answered the usual questions, but the final question was a tricky one – “Given a chance, would you recruit Ganpath again? If no, then please state reasons” I closed my eyes and thought about it. “Would I recruit him again?” The answer came to me immediately “No”. Why? The answer came immediately again. Ganpath was an undergraduate commerce, but his previous employment was as a call center support. He wanted to come to a line where he could use some of what he studied. During his interview before joining SmartFin Services, I told him “you want to come to this line because you feel this is what you have studied, I appreciate that. However, you don’t have previous experience in accounting. So I need to spend considerable time in training you. Because a lot of effort is going into training you, I expect that you stay with our company for atleast a year or a year and a half.” Ganpath agreed to that and joined. However, he left within 6 months and that really put me off. It took him about 3 months to get trained, and he was just about starting to perform to his potential when he put in his papers.
So I thought about the reply for that question. Do I just say “yes, I would recruit him again” (so that he doesn’t have any problems with his new employer). I was a bit confused and decided to reply to that email after a day.
The next day, I was clear about what needed to be done. I had a duty towards Ganpath’s new employer in communicating why I would not recruit him again. I consider it a “duty” because if was going to recruit someone tomorrow, I would definitely expect a correct feedback from the previous employer.
So I replied to that email stating that I would not recruit him again and explained the reason very clearly.

- 8th May 2009