how to (nicely) not hire someone 20

[SLTA]

OK folks,

What wording do you use to let someone know you're not going to hire them, after an interview, and before the position is filled? I want to be kind, but also to avoid potential litigation-creation statements about why.

thanks...

 

[BAretired]

zdas,
The answer to your question is yes but not very often. I ran a small consulting business from 1969 until I retired in 2008. I guess I was lucky...never ran into a slug applying for a job so the problem you describe never arose.

On the other hand, I ran into similar types of people (slugs?) who walked into the office with unreasonable demands or expectations. You deal with them politely but firmly and I would suggest the same could be done with prospective hires.



BA

 

[brandonbw]

I got my first job after the owner said they would keep my resume on file, as they found someone more qualified than me. But then was hired less than a month later.

I have gone to interviews over the years just to see what was out there, and the last one basically hired me on the spot, but I had to think about it and asked to please let me know if you fill the position before I give an answer. Never got a response back after that. So no answer ever again seems to work.

B+W Engineering and Design
Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

http://bwengr.com

 

[PEDARRIN2]

There will always be totally unqualified individuals, but the way I look at it, if I was interviewing a person, I would want to spend the few minutes it takes to help an almost qualified person along on their career path. It doesn't take much effort to do this and, in my opinion, would be more of a professional courtesy. And you may have the opportunity to interview them again in the future, once they gained more experience, and then hire them.

If somebody could not extend that to an interviewee, I would wonder if anybody would want to work for them in the first place.

If they seem to only want to convince me to change my mind - I then would firmly end the interview and go on.

 

[glass99]

I have a similar issue with bidders on projects I have designed. If for instance a glass supplier gave us a quote for the supply of some material, and we went with someone else, how do I tell the unsuccessful guy that they didn't get the order? The usual M.O. is just to not get back to them, but I always feel bad about it.

 

[MacGyverS2000]

If you think you might ask for a quote from them again, I suggest informing them why they didn't win the bid. NOTE: This is different than a job interview... you don't expect to ask the same interviewees back time and again. If their bids are too high, but only by a small amount, they may lower them to gain your business. If they're out of the ballpark, they may misunderstand what your project intentions are. If you continually ignore them, eventually they'll just stop bidding, and then you're stuck with a single source that's free to charge what they want.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[GregLocock]

...and to add an overlay of complexity, not all bids are evaluated on price alone, so if you want to widen your supplier-base, you probably need to tell the cheapest one that he needs to lift his game in whatever respects he fell over on.

Cheers

Greg Locock


New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

 

[glass99]

MacGyver - as GregLocock said, it is not about price alone for us, and if you do get back to suppliers about why they didn't win, you run the risk of them getting into an emotional discussion about why they feel like they deserve the work, especially if they were cheaper. I kind of like the idea of the form letter for bidders - keep it dry and uninformative beyond letting them know they can send the job to their archives.

I should also say that I prefer relationships to transactions, and try to minimize the shopping around.

 

[zdas04]

When I've done bids, I've been very careful to notify the non-winners that they didn't get it, but I've also been very careful not to give them ANY information that they could use in court (slander suits are a bitch). They get a "thanks for submitting, your bid was not selected" letter. Attorney's have told me that any information beyond that (e.g., "there was a lower bidder", "we didn't find your references compelling", "we didn't feel that your company had a chance in hell of pulling it off", "last time we used you we had to hire someone else to clean up the mess") could easily be grounds for a slander or restraint of trade suit. My experience has been that too many times the low bidder is a bottom feeding slimeball who will sue you just to annoy you. Other times, the low bidder has a better handle on the project than the high bidders and should be selected.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[MacGyverS2000]

Slander is making a false accusation that harms someone's reputation. You cannot be sued for slander because someone else was charging less... that's just silly. It's a fact that cannot be argued. Company 1 bids $1, Company 2 bids $2... Company 1 wins because Company 2's bid was higher.

Making the claim they probably couldn't pull it off, okay, that could be used against you.

Dan - Owner

http://www.Hi-TecDesigns.com

 

[zdas04]

It is a lot less silly if you had said "Thank you for bidding, we found your qualifications inadequate for this project" or "While your bid was the lowest, your track record indicates that you will ignore it from the moment it is awarded". There are a lot of reasons to reject someone, and the advice I got was that many of them are actionable. Don't fuel that fire.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[Ron]

I don't typically do public work, where bids are often restricted to selection of the low bidder. In my contract documents, I make it clear that the owner may select any contractor without regard to their bid ranking or select no contractor. For the award, I simply say that their bid was deemed by the owner to be responsive and that the owner now wishes to discuss their bid. For the rejection, I say that the owner selected another contractor.

 

[FreddyNurk]

This has gone slightly off track, but its not a bad comparison to make.

I used to think that most companies wouldn't bother chasing such things as unsuccessful tenders, until I came across a whole heap of lawsuit documentation from one of my former employers who kept attempting to take local authorities to the cleaners for writing their tenders that excluded their products.

What it does undoubtedly indicate, though, is just how much fun they would have been to negotiate with if they had won the relevant tender, which may well be part of the issue of having to reject a potential hire.

I'm sure that no one includes a contingency sum in their tender costing to fend off lawsuits from unsuitable tenderers, and I sure as hell hope it never gets that far. Same goes for hiring turkeys.

 

[moltenmetal]

David: it's always a good idea to add something like, "We reserve the right to select any proposal, or no proposal, at our sole discretion." to any RFQ. The only time you can't do that is in public tenders.

 

[glass99]

We are all at one time or another both rejected and the rejector, so when we have the power to reject we should do so responsibly. Organizations which negotiate overly vigorously with bidders in my opinion deserve to get sued. There is a mentality among owners sometimes that more bids are better. More bids equals more bidders wasting substantial amounts of time assembling prices, and more bad blood among your supplier base. If you are in the business of buying things which are not commodities (as most of us are), you need the good will of your supplier during the project, and on the next project. If you are buying a pure liquid commodity like raw materials or electricity, its a different picture.

Same is true with a firm looking to hire an engineer. Interviewing 50 people for the job is not cool.

 

[moltenmetal]

glass99: what you said is definitely true. We're very mindful of wasting people's time asking for firm prices when all we need is a budget number, and I watch certain people carefully to make sure there is no reverse auctioning or other unfair negotiation going on. I also make sure that I don't pass the clever idea of one supplier on a better way to solve a particular problem cheaply so he wins, on to his competitors- that's his innovation and he owns it, since I didn't pay for it. Some of our clients try this stuff on us but I won't do it to my suppliers. But I do reserve the right to judge the value of a proposal and credibility of the people proposing it independently from the price, on the basis of my gut alone. Anyone bidding to me and thinking that they can buy the work with a cheap price alone is fairly warned up front that that just ain't necessarily so.

 

[SNORGY]

Once upon a time, after going through four interviews, an interviewer-imposed psychological assessment, and a myriad of other cuckoo things, at the end of the fourth interview, the following conversation transpired:

[INTERVIEWER]: It has come down to you and another candidate. We will be choosing the other candidate. After having gotten to know you, while your qualifications are impressive, we feel that you do not appear to have a sense of humour and you do not communicate willingly with people whom you consider to be less intelligent than yourself.

[SNORGY]: I am here talking to you, aren't I?

I didn't get the job. Two days later, they fired the guy who did. I never did find out what happened to their psychologist. I heard a rumour that he went on to get an MBA.

 

[1gibson]

And a round of applause for Snorgy please!

 

[zdas04]

SNORGY, what a Dilbert moment. I love it.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[graybeach]

Great thread. At the beginning of the summer, I interviewed 2 excellent candidates for one intern position. It was really rough to choose, but choose I had to do. Telling the unsuccessful candidate was most unpleasant, but I told him quickly so as not to keep him hanging. I basically told him that I thought he had a very bright but I could only choose one. As it turns out the one I chose misrepresentated his interest in the type of work we do and made no secret that he would rather be doing something else. I really wish I had made the offer to the other one.

 

[AWloo]

graybeach,

Is it still possible to offer him an internship next summer?