If you were chairing a recruitment panel, would you…?

[SidandAndyssextoy]

Connect with LinkedIn with an unsuccessful candidate?

DH had an interview today for a fairly senior role, and this evening the chair of the panel has connected with him on LinkedIn. Would anyone do this with someone who hadn’t got the job?

Clearly I am looking for one specific answer here.

I agree with this. I know you sat there are no other jobs but very often, the chair of a panel is somebody independent, not employed by the company, but maybe a key stakeholder. They may well think your DH is a great candidate for a role in another organisation they work with.

but they chaired the recruitment panel? Before linked in, i have sat on recruitment panels in the NHS for services that were not mine. I might well have said to unsuccessful but promising candidates that I'd like to hold their CV/contact details and passed them details of other jobs they might be really good at. They would still have had to apply and go through the process and it would be unlikely that I would be on the interview panel so no professional impropriety.

Yes, they chaired as an independent. But their line of work is one it’s hard to imagine DH in, not that this has stopped him having little fantasies of being offered some high-powered role there! Realistically he has no relevant experience so the most likely thing would be that the chair just liked him.

I wouldn't as it would send the wrong message to the candidate as if they are in with a chance before the interviews are concluded.

After the role has been appointed and all candidates notified of the outcome, then I think that's fine.

Lol maybe I misread! Just so used to these veiled threads where people will give a really vague situation and ask ‘would you share a lift with a colleague’ and it turns out it’s a colleague he’s slept with four times or something!

Not just you, that's how I read the OP too and I thought your response was perfectly in tune with that.

Oh cool! I’m not going crazy (yet) then! They always start off as a perfectly reasonable situation then develop into ‘well he’s cheating on me.’

I had an interview recently and the interviewer added me on LinkedIn. I'm afraid I didn't get the job but thought I had after she added me 🤷‍♀️ Luckily I got a much nicer job a few weeks later so try and keep the attitude that everything happens for a reason!

How weird.

No, it was entirely a question about whether people thought a total stranger who has just chaired an interview panel would connect on LinkedIn with a candidate if they hadn‘t got the job (hoping everyone would say ‘this would never happen - he must have got the job!). Replies have been interesting but I have absolutely no suspicion that my DH is cheating, with a member of yesterday’s interview panel or anyone else.

@bbqhulahoop I’m so pleased you found something else! But DH has been job hunting for quite a long time now and I think he just really wants it to work out this time.

I mean if they’ve just connected up with him on the website but not hired them there could have literally been any reason - maybe they want to keep him in their minds as they liked him but found him a bad fit for this particular job. Maybe they were curious about something on his CV and wanted a nosy. Maybe he looked familiar and they were figuring out where they’d seen him before.

One thing I’ve learned in life is you will go round the bend if you spend your time trying to figure out why other people do the weird things that they do. There could be literally any reason under the sun.

I would assume he thought your husband was a useful contact and nothing more.

It's so disheartening if you're having a lot of rejection. I hope the right thing comes along soon!

Unless you are in management for that organisation how would you know this?

Sorry, the last few posts have made me realise my OP was horribly unhelpfully phrased.

He doesn’t KNOW whether he’s got the job! He’ll find out on Monday. So obviously the connection felt like a positive thing but no counting chickens etc. So I started this thread to see whether anyone thought connecting with him could be anything other than a good sign - and several posters have made some suggestions of reasons why a chair might connect with someone who wasn’t about to be offered the job.

Because it’s a very small body, the job is to run it, and the chair is an external person who runs a rather different company that DH wouldn’t obviously have the skills to work at.

Oh well in that case it could be a good sign. But it could also just be then checking him out. I’d say you don’t know till you know - I always try to tell myself I didn’t get the job and put it out of my mind. And then see what happens!

Two things. Either the chair knows that he's going to be offered the job, or they know he hasn't but really liked him anyway and they want him to know that.

They’re not though. This guy was a sort of independent chair who wouldn’t work with the post holder and whose day job wouldn’t really interact at all. They are in two different fields.

If he's independent he might have just liked your DH or considered that he might be suitable for another role he's an independent chair for, which you couldn't possibly know about as you don't know what work he does.

Could it be that the company wanted to check out his social media?

I guess so. I don’t know if he works with any other bodies - he has a very specific connection to this one which I guess is why he chaired, but could be involved with others.

This! I have chaired recruitment panels, I have them looked up the person on LinkedIn - but it is unprofessional to link until the results are known. I have linked after the job offer has been made.

I agree it may have been an accident.

And now someone completely random knows more than the chair!

Astonishing.

@AlisonDonut ahem!

Oh you had a name change fail. Apology accepted.

I would have thought it was a good sign! But I don't really 'get' linked in.
Or an accident click.

Either way fingers crossed for your DH!