Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Leona C. Clayton. Her opinions are her own.
Have you ever experienced a candidate declining your offer after you have spent a lot of months investing great energy on scouting for the best match of skills and qualification for a very important position on your team? This experience is not pleasant, and if you are looking for a way out of this or if you don’t even wish to experience this, this article is for you.
In a real sense, when employment involves top-talents, the candidates themselves control the employment process. What this means is that they can afford to make a choice to join your organization or choose to decline your offer. A survey conducted by a research paper writing service PapersOwl identified nine main reasons why students tend to reject job offers.
Thus, you need to understand the reason why a candidate may end up rejecting a job offer.
You will find below the top factors that influence a candidate’s decision about job offers. knowing these can also help you save time over candidates that won’t respond to your offer. And how to reject a job offer in case you don’t know what to look out for. Enjoy!
1. DOES YOUR JOB PROVIDE GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES?
This question is one you need to ask yourself following a job offer rejection by a valuable candidate. The fact remains that candidates generally look for a workplace where they can improve themselves, as many research papers reveal this and can also offer them a good shot at fulfilling their career goals.
The case for top candidates is not that they need a place to work, but they want a place where they can thrive and bring their aspirations to life.
Thus, you should be ready to put the short-term and long-term goals of candidates in mind when you consider giving them a position or an offer. If your offer will advance their career with ease and give them the highest satisfaction in what they do, you can be certain this is the choice which they will opt for.
2. WHAT DO YOUR RATINGS AND REVIEWS SAY?
Hiring a candidate also goes beyond knowing if they are capable of doing what you are hiring them to do. Many times, it even goes beyond being able to pay what the candidate demands. You can have the perfect candidate for the right job and still get your offer rejected, especially when your records speak against you.
For most candidates, good research and background checks are usually conducted on the company that is giving them an offer. If previous employees made many negative remarks about your work conditions, benefits or remuneration, it could be a minus on your successful conversion of a candidate to an employee.
3. BETTER OFFERS WITH LOCATION PACKAGES
What usually is the case of many candidates is that they stay in a place that is quite distant from the site of your organization. Many of them think they will be able to cope with daily transportation when they start attending interviews, but they discover this isn’t possible after a couple of trips down to your workplace.
Many of this group of people end up declining the offer because of the anticipated rigors of everyday commuting. This can also be a reason which is not helping you pin your desired candidate.
Yet, providing a transportation allowance or even offering some work-from-home days can be an attractive package for this group of candidates.
4. LOOPHOLES IN THE HIRING PROCESS
We all know that human activities are prone to have errors. This is also unavoidable sometimes in the employment process.
Prospective employees sometimes have to deal with a long period of silence from the employers after the interviews. While these candidates wait, they could find other offers that go well with them. Thus, when your offer is ready, they won’t be able to honor it anymore.
This means that you should work on maintaining good communication with candidates that most likely will work in your team and not put them in a situation where they will take an offer from another company or organization.
5. COMPANY’S GROWTH RATE
What is seen in the employment trend among younger folks today is their attraction to companies that present impressive growth rates and are also well-funded.
Candidates, especially most-sought-after candidates no longer care so much about a company’s past popularity if it has now become less innovative and exciting!
Thus, if you fall into a category that is close to that described above, you can consider making some improvements in your company’s culture and internal organization to favor its attractiveness to potential candidates.
6. COMPENSATIONS
It is common to find candidates declining job offers if the rate offered as compensation is not satisfactory. There is an argument that when a worker is not met with their salary expectation, the process of conversion from candidate to employee may be affected.
In a similar way, you should also bear in mind that you are not the only one that loves quality and efficiency. If a candidate thus meets these requirements, other companies are after him/her, and he/she has a free hand to refuse your offer if it is lower than that compared to your contenders.
7. CULTURES AND WORKPLACE TRADITIONS
Will my new workplace offer me happiness? Will I be happy working with my colleagues? Can I cope with the caliber of workers in my workplace each day?
All these questions crowd the mind of candidates, and if they can seem to find unfavorable answers, they might drop your offer for another which promises a better job experience.
Growing among the young minds is a workplace that offers excitement for them and not the strict traditional approaches. If you wish to get a high-rated young employee, you might want to make your workplace atmosphere less tense.
8. BAD IMPRESSIONS AND ATTITUDE FROM YOUR HIRING STAFF
Some candidates, especially those who are already aware that they are in high demand can pick on the attitude of your hiring staff to get your offer turned down.
Many times, it goes beyond having the right terms, if your hiring team fails to present the offer in the proper way, your offer might be declined by the candidate.
Beware of allowing your ego to get in the way when dealing with a candidate that has many offers already at hand and is only considering your company as one of the many options. Little impressions can send him off or make him stay.
9. PRESSURIZING CANDIDATES
A truth that is often difficult to accept is that not everyone will work with you. Not everyone will give you the answer you want at once. But a mistake that can be made is to try to pressurize the candidate into giving you an almost immediate reply – it never works this way.
You have to allow the candidate to consider every possible option before dropping their current job and embracing your company. But if you insist on doing it your way and try to force a reply out of the candidate, you should not be surprised when you are given a ‘no’.
Finally, it is a good practice to always ask candidates who decline an offer you give them the rationale behind it. So, you can also request politely to know why your offer was declined so that you can prevent making the same mistakes with future candidates.