You suddenly find yourself in a bind. That candidate you extended a job offer to has turned it down. Now what do you do? You just spent a lot of time interviewing and getting to know that candidate, and thought that they would be perfect for the job you’re hiring for. Now you have to start the interview process over again. If this is a familiar scenario, maybe it’s time to take a look at your hiring process, and see what might be causing you to lose candidates.
Here are the 5 main reasons candidates don’t accept your job offer.
- Your selection process is too long.
- The candidate was over interviewed for the level of position.
- The position has unrealistic expectations.
- The candidate received a counter offer or a better job offer elsewhere.
- Too many individuals are involved in your hiring process.
Unlike years past, it’s a candidate market right now. The job market is hot, and the best candidates get snatched up within a week or two of beginning their job search. If you take too long moving from phone screen to interview stages to making the job offer, you will lose people.
For an entry-level position and even mid-level ones, there is no need to interview candidates 2, 3 or more times. The more often that you make a candidate come back to your office to interview again, the more likely they are to grow weary with your process. Chances are they will think that you aren’t really interested in them, or that this environment may not be a good place to work because nothing actually gets done. Obviously for higher level management positions, there is going to be a different interview process, but you still don’t want to drag it out too long. Once you know the person is qualified and the right fit, extend an offer. Don’t make them come back to meet with more team members.
Maybe during the interview, the candidate realized that the amount of work expected to be done in this role is far too much for one person to do. Or, for the amount of experience that you are requesting from candidates, the salary and benefits don’t align with that level of experience.
A candidate accepting a counter offer is always a risk you have to take if you are interviewing candidates who are currently employed. People fear change, and if they have the opportunity to earn more money or get some sort of promotion at their current company, many times they take it. But you can stay informed on salary and benefit trends for your industry and area, so that you can present a competitive job offer to your candidates.
The more people that get involved in the hiring process, the harder it is to come to a decision. Just getting schedules aligned so that the different people can attend interviews and meetings to discuss the candidates can be difficult, let alone actually deciding on which candidate to extend an offer to. This results in a longer process, where candidates are more likely to drop out of the running.
If you’re tired of losing the best candidates when your company is looking to hire new employees, let Key Resource Group share our recruiting expertise with you. We can help streamline the hiring process, so that next time you can get that first candidate to accept your job offer.