How Delaying a Job Offer Can Affect Your Business

Delaying a job offer can have an adverse effect 9 times out 10 and it can be detrimental to your business as a whole. When companies take a long time to make up their mind on a candidate it’s very likely that that candidate will go off the market accepting a role with a different company. Candidates may also be wary of starting with your organisation if you take too long because it doesn’t bode well when the candidate experience is so drawn out. There’s nothing more frustrating for a company or hiring manager to have to take things from the start because of indecision or delays.

Aside from the loss of time, effort and added cost of going through a whole interview process fruitlessly, companies need to ask themselves what the cost of not hiring would be to their business. Can you afford to not have a person in place in that particular team? And what happens if you miss out on a good candidate in the hopes of finding a better one, but never find a second candidate that is up to your standards?

We’ve put together a few tips to help you streamline your hiring process and nip indecisiveness in the bud:

Be aware of IT employment trends

Most hiring managers will be aware of the employment trends in the IT industry. Compared to other industries across the UK, the IT market has one of the lowest unemployment rates. Therefore, you need to approach the hiring process with that in mind. When the demand for IT professionals far outweighs the supply of candidates, taking too long to make an offer will see you lose out on talent. In the current market a sense of urgency when deciding on bringing someone on board is a forte.

The perfect candidate.

Often hiring managers will lose out on a very good candidate while they wait to interview the perfect one. The perfect candidate is most likely non-existent, so while you keep that very good candidate on the back burner looking for the holy grail of all candidates, you’re losing out on an actual hire. Most candidates will lose interest in your role roughly a week after the final interview and the chance that they’re going to be scooped up by another company rises exponentially. All the “nice-to-haves” are skills which a candidate can pick up on the job, so if they tick all the essential boxes offer them the role.

Getting ‘cold feet’ because of a previous bad hire

So, you’ve made a bad hire previously, who hasn’t? This shouldn’t put you off making your next hire. Instead learn from your mistakes: pay closer attention to telling signs when interviewing, check references thoroughly even if your recruiter has done it and maybe bring a second person in during interviews for a second opinion. However, don’t drag out the process because of cold feet, you don’t want to miss out on your next great developer because of a past bad choice. Delaying a job offer can mean you lose out on a stellar candidate.

Budgets

Don’t set off on a hiring odyssey without having budgets approved. Why? Because this can bring the process down to a halt if you don’t have approval for the job opening. Make sure that you have the “OK” to sign off on an offer without having to get signatures from different areas of the business, this will streamline the process to no end. Having your financials in check will help you avoid delaying a job offer.

Have a clear picture of the “Right Candidate”

Before you start looking for someone to fill the role make sure that you carefully think out exactly would make up the right candidate. If you start adding essential skills further down the line you’ll delay the hiring process as you’ll be back at square one. Visualise your ideal candidate and be realistic about the “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves”. If you decide to add to your skill list later on, it’s unfair on candidates in the interviewing process if halfway through they are no longer right for the role and it’s also time wasted for you as a business. Rather than jump the mark, take some extra time in defining the right skills profile at the start, this will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run.

No surprises in the interview process

There’s nothing more off-putting for a candidate than having surprise steps sprung on them towards the end of the process. Make sure you’ve got the interview stages mapped out from the start and stick to it. If you need to do a team interview, that’s fine. If you need to have 4 people sitting in on the interview, again that’s fine. Just make sure that you let the candidate know from the start. What also helps is having a timeline with time put aside on certain days to conduct interviews. That way you’ve got it all scheduled and the interviewees can also plan their time off.

There you go, a few tips to help you streamline the process and help you miss out on candidates less. While there are many variables when it comes to hiring a new person for your team, delays in job offers should not be one of them.

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