You just offered a candidate a job. What's a reasonable expectation for when you should hear back from them on an acceptance or a decline?
We always recommend to our clients to really make sure and set the expectation during offer time of when you expect to hear back from them. We are recommending about 3 to 4 days to hear back from a candidate, assuming that you're following best practices, you've interviewed two to three times, and you've really got to know each other. By that point, you really should know within a couple of days if you're going to take that offer, um, or not, or potentially counter.
What we don't want to see, typically, is anything over a week, and we also don't like to see pressure interviews where you're saying, "Hey, I need to know in 24 hours, yes or no." Uh, it just sends kind of a bad message, a bad cultural message about the organization.
If the time has lapsed, you're going to always want to keep that kind of communication door open with a candidate. If the time has lapsed and they haven't responded to you and you're looking to get a hold of them, you can always have the option to rescind the offer. And if you're going to do that, I would do that specifically in writing, that you are going to rescind the offer that you that you have shared.
A pro tip: if you're really trying to attract that candidate, we have seen some of our employers be very creative, where you might have teammates reach out to, um, candidates via email or a quick message on LinkedIn saying, "Hey, heard you got an offer, we're really excited for you to join the team." Or we've had other employers send out some swag to the candidate while they're considering. In this tight labor market, we have seen some creativity to make sure those candidates feel welcome, um, at the offer stage.
For more tips, like and follow AgHires as you look to offer, uh, new candidates jobs.
