Does Honesty Pay Off?

A key challenge for candidates looking to land their next opportunity is how to manage concurrent pursuits. From a candidate’s standpoint, they want to make sure that they do not eliminate an opportunity until they have landed one; this includes candidates faking illnesses or creating other arbitrary conflicts to stall one pursuit while they are pursuing another. Here are two recent examples:

1. A client lost both their two top candidates, because they were waiting to final interview a candidate that had lied about an illness to pursue another opportunity, and their other top candidate landed another opportunity during the wait.

2. A candidate was completely transparent with the hiring manager about a second pursuit that they had. In this instance, the client sped up their hiring process, so that the candidate could evaluate both offers together. He took the job with our client. In the end, our client raised our candidates offer, because his actions showed his level of integrity.

Which side of the fence would you fall on?