NOT MY HIRE?!

Happy Mid Week!

Full disclaimer, I'm going to keep the identities of all parties (well except myself) completely private in this story.  This goes back nearly 10 years in my career, recruiting for technical talent during a really difficult employment market.

Using third party headhunters is/was CRITICAL to keeping up with the demand for talent.  I was fortunate enough to have a handful of great partners to work on engineering roles.  In general, I had a good mix of agency candidates and those I searched up on my own to present to management.

In this case, we interviewed and hired an agency candidate for a role in our Pacific Northwest office.  This person was living on the other side of the country, and would require a full relocation package, and likely a long lead time to get started in the office.  As the offer was verbally accepted and signed, and aside from putting several bi-weekly touch bases in my Outlook, I checked this one off my list.

[Never count your chickens and/or hires]

One week before this new hire's first day, I decided to call and make sure we're on track, and confirm his relocation was running smoothly.  No answer.  I left a message and thought to myself, "I've done my part", and onto the next task for the day.

My phone rings 1-minute later and the voice says, "Is this Richard Krakora?".  I respond with a yes. The voice then says, "Did you just call [enter candidates name]?"  Knowing this was falling into the realm of confidential information being shared, I said, "I can't really confirm nor deny if I was calling [enter the candidate's name]  The voice on the other end of the phone said, "Richard, I just listened to the message you left [enter the candidate's name], I am at his home."  The voice went onto introduce himself as a member of the FBI, giving me his contact info to return his call.  I quickly stepped down the hall and laid all the info on our HR Director's desk!

So long story short(ened), this candidate somehow cleared a background check with our agency partner, all while being wanted for the FBI for felony embezzlement.  The story didn't end there, the FBI asked our company not to rescind our offer, in fact, act as nothing was amiss.  The plan was to have the person start on the prescribed hire date and set up a sting.  They caught the person on his first day, along with a spouse/girlfriend in the car outside who was also wanted.

Was there a teachable moment here?  Probably several:  Did we make sure our staffing partners are doing their job?  Did we follow up with candidate post-offer frequently enough to ensure a smooth start?  Did we screen the candidate thoroughly enough during our interview process?

Perhaps its a more simple issue, we're dealing with people.  And people are unpredictable.  You can do everything right, and still hire the wrong person.