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In today’s recruitment landscape, the power lies with candidates rather than employers.

This means that candidates with the appropriate skills and experience can afford to be highly critical of your offering. With so many potential opportunities out there, they can scrutinise your employer brand and recruitment process at their will.

This dynamic makes talent more mobile than ever before, too: a white paper from LaSalle Network found that three out of four millennials are open to finding a new job.

Recruiters must adjust their strategies and techniques to this new dynamic if they’re going to attract the best talent.

This means reassessing your attitude towards boomerang employees.

What Are Boomerang Employees?

Boomerang employees are those team members who decide to leave a company but return at some point in the future.

As we all know, there are several reasons that an employee might decide to leave a business. Some of the main reasons include:

  • Looking for new professional experiences
  • Pursuing better benefits
  • Dissatisfaction with their job
  • Changes to personal circumstances

Those employees might look for greener pastures, but never actually find them. In some cases, those employees might decide to return to their previous employer – that’s when they become a boomerang employee.

In The Corporate Culture and Boomerang Employee Study, Workplace Trends found that 15% of employees have returned to a former employer.

Why Hire a Boomerang Employee

As the workforce grows more mobile and receptive to new opportunities, we’ll see a growth in the number of boomerang employees.

The same study from Workplace Trends found that 76% of HR professionals are more accepting of boomerang employees today when compared to the past.

Here are the main reasons you’ll want to consider hiring a boomerang employee:

A proven cultural fit

A study from Leadership IQ found that 46% of new hires will fail within the 18 months. Of that 46%, a shocking 89% are deemed to fail because of difficulties integrating into the workplace and its culture.

That can increase your employee turnover rate and push your recruitment costs sky high. If you hire a boomerang employee, though, you can rest assured that they’re a great cultural fit and that they’re familiar with your unique culture.

A lower cost per hire

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the average cost per hire in the UK is placed at around £3,000. That’s a significant amount of money – mainly when you’ll almost inevitably lose a portion of that talent within the first 18 months.

If you maintain close contact with your alumni, you’ll be able to slash those costs. A well-maintained talent pool can give you access to the pre-approved talent that you need.

Curious about what talent pools can do for you? Read our piece on six reasons you should develop an alumni talent pool.

A lower time to hire

Every day that you have an empty vacancy will cost your business significant amounts of money. You might lack a salesperson, for instance, who would otherwise be contributing to your revenue.

This is why it’s critical that you reduce your time to hire. That’s easier said than done, though, given that it’s currently so difficult to find the appropriate talent. That difficulty protracts time to hire and costs your business money.

Boomerang employees can help here. Given that they’ll be pre-approved talent, you can often move them faster through the hiring process to reduce your time to hire.

Shorter onboarding times

Finding the right talent is just half of the battle: you’ve also got to train and onboard your new hires. This can be an expensive process, given that you’ll have to assign lots of administrative time and effort. New hires might also impact the productivity of your existing employees, too.

Those risks are mitigated when you decide to work with a boomerang employee, though. Your pre-approved talent will be able to hit the ground running immediately and start driving value from your business.

Benefit from new perspectives

Diverse workplaces are happier, more productive and more innovative. It’s crucial that you try to foster people from a range of different backgrounds – that includes professional experiences.

On their adventures, your boomerang employees might have picked up some valuable experiences and best practice along the way. You can incorporate the best parts of those experiences into your culture to reap the benefits of fresh input.

Boost your employer brand

According to LinkedIn, a staggering 75% of candidates will check out your company’s online presence before submitting an application. This means that they’ll inevitably check out your reviews on job boards like Glassdoor.

Re-hiring a boomerang employee can boost your employer brand. It demonstrates that your employees genuinely enjoy working for your business, and it also shows you value enduring relationships with your talent. Those are desirable factors to potential talent.

Monitor Your Boomerang Talent with Elevate

Are you ready to keep tabs on your alumni, attract boomerang talent and unlock the benefits above? Learn more about Elevate and how our platform can provide you with immediate visibility to the talent you need.