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44% of managers are hesitant to hire a previous employee

Journalist: Arunth Sriganthan, People Management

ended 14. April 2023

I'm doing a piece about a survey from recruiter Robert Walters which reveals that 44 per cent of managers are hesitant to hire previous employees.

In addition, almost three quarters of professionals (71%) have stated that they are open to returning to their pre-Covid employer – with half admitting that the reasons as to why they left are no longer applicable in today’s market. 

I was wondering if you'd be able to provide comment from a recruiter perspective on the following:

  • Why might there be hesitation amongst managers?
  • What are the upsides of boomerang hires?
  • If you're a recruiter, have you seen these findings and what do you make of them?
  • If you're a culture expert, why might this be the case (71% of professionals being open to returning to their pre-Covid employer) and how it can be avoided?

My deadline is 10:15am tomorrow.

Many thanks

4 responses from the Newspage community

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Mary MaguireVerified
Managing Director at Astute Recruitment Ltd
Boomerang hires can be a brilliant staffing solution. The 'boomerang' already knows the systems, the teams and the business and often has invaluable insights that a brand new employee to the business will have to spend a long time learning. They may have gained greater commercial skills to add more value to the business since they last left too. The key to this is what was the initial reason was that the employee originally left. Was it on good terms? For progression that is now possible after a gap? If there were 'issues' in the past, these will be remembered. Once bitten, twice shy is definitely the case. The '44%' of managers who wouldn't re-hire a former employee, were probably 'once bitten'. In my experience, good people can be hard to find so if you can 'catch' someone at the right point and have the right role available, why wouldn't you employ them again? I've seen first-hand the huge advantages of re-hiring great staff, in my business, for my clients and candidates.
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Claire Williams (FCIPD)0
Chief People Officer at Ciphr
There are many upsides to having returning ‘boomerang’ employees. In most instances they can hit the ground running and don’t require the same extensive — if any — inducting and onboarding that a new starter would normally require. Purely from a ‘bang for your buck’ perspective, you often get much greater productivity during those early months than you would otherwise expect. This benefits the wider team too, especially when you’re hiring to bolster resources and create bandwidth, and will, hopefully, also have a positive impact on morale and overall performance. Some of the greatest benefits, however, come from employees who leave for genuine career progression elsewhere, that your organisation (for whatever reason) were unable to offer at the time. They’ve usually gained more experience, are more skilled, and have a real passion to return to work for your business, which should be embraced.
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Samuel Mather-HolgateVerified
Independent Financial Adviser at Mather and Murray Financial
Highering previous employees all depends on the reason for leaving and performance of the worked when in post. If the reason for leaving was progression then I would welcome future discussions with them. We have also had employees leave to go to competitors as they thought our expectations were unreasonable, who have come back to us because they’ve realised the grass isn’t always greener and it was their expectations that needed to change.
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David RobinsonVerified
Co-Founder at Wildcat Law
As someone who has rejoined a previous employer and has rehired a former employee, I can certainly see the benefits of bringing people back in.
The benefits are that it typically shortens the training cycle - they already know your systems and culture.
They are also a known quantity - removing some of the risk with hiring.
Ideally, they will have also picked up additional skills and knowledge from working elsewhere.
The only real negative is the reasons they left in the first place. If those reasons still exist then this will likely be a short revisit.
It also highlights the adage of never burning bridges.