I got this Ask The Headhunter post in my email this morning:
Employee quits, boss wants her to refund employment agency fee
Oh. My. Gosh.
At first I thought this was a joke. But Nick is serious about his advice… this isn’t a joke. This is one of the reasons why finding and keeping a job feels like a joke.
Some of my favorite parts:
“… the recruiting and hiring process usually blows up in the job seeker’s face — not the employer’s.”
“Most agencies play fast and loose because they get paid to fill a job, not to deliver the best hire, and everyone suffers for it.”
“What’s your company doing to make sure it’s a good place to work?”
“I suggest you improve your recruiting and interviewing processes — and how you manage.”
The question makes me wonder if the person who wrote it, and wants to go after the ex-employee, is an embarrassed narcissist. Too bad we don’t know who the company is, so we can know to never, ever work there. Who’d want to work for a boss that is even entertaining this idea?
When I’ve had people who have reported to me resign, my response to them is “you have to do what is best for you and your family.” Seriously, we need to be more kind, more accepting, more human, about this whole thing. Sure, you might be in a pickle, but there are human lives and families at stake here. If you had a better environment and paid more perhaps you wouldn’t lose your people. (perhaps)
The sentence that most stuck out at me was this:
“Once you’ve got the hire for five months, whatever happens next is a management problem, not a placement problem.”
In my new role at BambooHR I’ve been learning a lot about culture, and HR buzzwords like employee satisfaction employee performance. When these are buzzwords they can maybe inspire a bit of change. But when HR, managers, and organizational leadership really care about these things, culture changes for the better.
Seriously, would any of you want to work at a company where the manager would even put this crazy question (read it here) in writing, much less send it to Nick?
There aren’t enough face palms in the world for this one.