Hiring a boomerang ex-employee is a tactic which most concerns are adopting nowadays. An ex- ex-employee brings wisdom from the outside world.
“We can never fall short when it comes to recruiting, hiring, maintaining and growing our workforce. It is the employees who make our organisation’s success a reality.”
Vern Dosch, Wired Differently
Salary, career progression, or acquiring more exciting opportunity may lead one of your team members to leave the workplace. And months after, you received a call from the same person as he wants to re-join your organisation.
What are you going to do now? Will you welcome them or ignore?
In the past, employers didn’t rehire former employees. Once someone left a company, they have gone for good. But today, things are different. Many employers welcome the past stellar employees as they might end up returning as a powerhouse new hire.
However, hiring a boomerang ex-employee should be done with careful rumination and attention to detail. Just because an applicant happens to be a previous employee doesn’t mean he is a good fit for the company. Here we are offering some of the top tips, especially for you to keep in mind when considering hiring a boomerang employee.
“Hiring should always be part of your long-term strategy, not a quick fix to an immediate problem.”
― Steven J. Bowen, Total Value Optimization: Transforming Your Global Supply Chain Into a Competitive Weapon
Five golden tips to keep in mind when hiring a boomerang ex-employee
Analyse why they left in the first place
The first step towards reconciliation is finding out what went wrong in the relationship. Dig in and investigate what happened to him and why he left the job?
- Did he leave on good terms?
- Or is he left because he couldn’t get along with his manager or any co-worker?
- Is that manager still there?
- Will he continue to report to the manager?
- Or has that manager left?
If you can’t determine why someone left, you can’t be confident they’ll stick around for much longer the second time around.
- Address any lingering issues head-on
Ensure you resolved all the issues he had with the company to avoid the old problems crept back into the picture to affect the boomerang candidate’s ability. And if you have any concerns about the employee’s performance or fit, you need to bring those up, too. It is the right way to minimise the risk of the boomerang candidate leaving again, as quickly as he got rehired.
- Consider how their return will affect employee morale
Before hiring a boomerang ex-employee, it’s essential to consider how your other employees welcome him. If you have a small organisation and team, the impact of hiring a boomerang back can have a more significant impact on the morale of the company. So, it’s critical not to bring bad blood into the office. You need to do due diligence to make sure there are no existing issues between current employees and the boomerang employee.
“Hiring people with fresh ideas is the key to a company’s future success.”
Eraldo Banovac
- Consider how they’ve changed
Your former employee may have gone a few months after or a few years; they have likely changed since your last interaction with him. He may have improved and diversified his skills during the interim. So consider how they changed and how much those changes will be beneficial to your organisation.
- Consider how you’ve changed
Just as your former employee has changed during the time apart, it’s quite likely that your organisation has evolved as well.
You can’t ensure that the circumstances that the person was working under when they first collaborated in your company are the same as now. That’s a potentially dangerous trap that both employers and employees can get into; your former employee is coming back to the same environment and culture, but it may not be the same anymore. So, consider how much your boomerang employee can be a perfect fit for your current work environment.
Hiring a boomerang ex-employee can save a lot of cost for your company as you don’t need to spend much on training them. If he comes in hot with new ideas from where they just worked, he can bring a lot of changes for your company. But if he is not the right fit for your company as per the current scenario, it can cost you more.
So, what is the key takeaway? Do your homework before hiring a boomerang ex-employee with assistance from the best Headhunting firm in India.
“The smartest business decision you can make is to hire qualified people. Bringing the right people on board saves you thousands, and your business will run smoothly and efficiently.”
Brian Tracy
