When recruiting, some jobs merit regional, national, or even international searches, while other do not. Typically rare skills or critical positions are the ones where you go outside the local market.

But when your favored candidate doesn't make the commitment to permanently relocate, you should keep on searching.

As a hiring manager, you're making commitments to the candidate. You'll invest in the candidate in the form of training and acclimatization. You take the risk that the candidate may not be what they say they are -- in their words, and on their resume. You stop your ongoing recruitment process as opposed to continuing to look at and evaluate other candidates.

In return, the candidate owes you and the company commitments, one of which should be the willingness to permanently relocate to the community where the job is.

Don't get suckered into compromising on this.

"I'll commute for a while, and then look for a house." Translation: "I'll test the waters on this job, and if I don't like it, I won't have disrupted my family's life."

"I'm used to a 90 minute commute." Translation: "I'll put up with a 90 minute commute until I can find a job closer to home."

"I'll fly back and forth until my old house sells." Translation: "I'll commit to move, IF my old house sells."

"Can't I work part time from home?" Translation: "I'll be trying to increase the amount of time I'm not in the office, and this is a good starting spot."

As a footnote, I hate the "working from home" trend. I currently work from home, and can tell you with certainty that my productivity is nowhere close to what it would be in an office environment. And fortunately my writing career doesn't require a lot of interaction and relationship building with other employees, otherwise how would that ever happen?With the exception of a few rare sets of circumstances, I've not seen "work from home" arrangements benefit the company. As a result, my answer on this proposal has always been a emphatic "no."

If you do compromise and hire an employee that doesn't commit to relocate, you will eventually lose him or her. It's happened to me every time.

It might take three months or three years, but eventually the employee will leave. This is because the initial lack of commitment tells you that the employee has doubts. Maybe they're continuing to look for a job that pays more, is closer to "home," fits their interests better, or whatever. The point is, eventually they will find that job and leave the one you're offering them.

I once hired an employee with a 90 minute commute. Despite his assurances that he was "used to it," he only lasted six months. Not surprisingly, his new job was only ten minutes from his home. The position I hired him for required considerable training and development, and at the six month mark, he was just starting to have an impact. I basically lost that six months, plus another couple getting the recruiting wheels going again. Lesson learned.

In another instance, I had a hire move to the job, but into an apartment. She decided to keep her house in another state and rent it out -- to her adult daughter. Her spouse made the move initially, but when some problems developed "back home," the spouse returned. It was just a matter of time after that before we lost the employee. While that time frame was several years, and I did think on balance it was still a good move to hire the woman, I should have seen the warning signs long before I did.

Quid pro quo. You make a commitment of time and resources when you make a critical hire, and it's not unreasonable for you to expect the hire to commit to permanently relocating to your place of business in return. 18.1

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Tom Spears

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