In the war for talent, companies need to consider any and all options to fill the empty seats. Businesses have offered free college tuition, higher wages, sign-on bonuses, remote and hybrid work options, better benefits and other goodies.
A smart strategy is to comb through past employees who left on good terms to see if they’d like to come back. As an executive recruiter, I’ve personally placed people back to their old firm after having left for a few years or more. This has happened numerous times, including one person who left and returned on three occasions.
The logic is that the person knows the company very well, is comfortable with its business model, may still have close friends who are still there and can hit the ground running. When the job is a significant hike in pay and stature, the boomerang employee will feel that they’re returning a hero.
It’s not always easy. Before bringing a person back, the company needs to do their due diligence to ensure that the person wasn’t shown the door for bad behavior or violating any rules and policies. With a high turnover rate due to the Great Resignation, there may not be any staff left to vouch for the boomerang employee.
Human resources needs to check why the person left. Hopefully, the worker left because, at the time, there wasn’t any room for growth and they received a great job offer that enabled them to leap up a number of rungs on the corporate ladder. The return would work best if the ex-employee returned for a more senior-level role, compared to where they were previously.
In a different type of job market, the hiring manager may worry that the person will leave once again, and they’d have to spend time searching for a replacement, vetting the applicant, onboarding and training them. This takes time, energy and resources. In a difficult environment, a hiring manager will have to take the chance that the boomerang employee will be a flight risk.
Some people may demure if the company reaches out to them, inquiring if they’d like to return to the firm. The person may be happy in their new role and respectfully decline the offer. It’s highly probable that a person may feel awkward returning. It’s like you’ve left your small town for the big city and later came back home.
Returning may evoke a feeling that you’re regressing in your career instead of moving forward. This could happen even if the opportunity is terrific. It’s also possible that the person left because of the corporate culture, co-workers or management. If none of these things have changed, it wouldn’t be attractive for someone to return.
Blind, the anonymous posting platform for professionals, looked into this trend.
- In a survey of 3,129 verified professionals, the app found that 42% of respondents believed their current company treats former employees fairly during the interview process.
- In contrast, 14% think a potential boomerang employee does not have a fair shot compared to a fresh, new-to-the-company candidate. The remaining 44% polled by Blind were unsure. For the millions of Americans who left their jobs in the last year amid the “Great Resignation,” the survey findings might be welcome news.
- Almost 90% of current job interviewers view candidates that used to work at the company more positively, compared to 14% who said “more negatively.”
- Blind found every professional who interviews job candidates, as part of their role at LinkedIn, said they favored former LinkedIn employees. More than nine out of 10 current job interviewers at Adobe, Capital One, Expedia Group, Google, Indeed, Meta (Facebook), Salesforce, Uber, VMware and Zillow Group said the same.
Tapping into former employees could yield a goldmine of talent and benefit the company in other ways too. The boomeranger gets the corporate culture, knows how things work and can offer fresh perspectives gained from the companies they’ve worked at since their departure. For those who’ve had a hard time finding a job, as the boomerang trend gains more attention, they will feel more comfortable asking their old bosses if they could come back.
Source: Forbes
