Looking for a new job is a very emotional process. It’s a big decision that drastically impacts your personal life. Leaving an environment where you’re an established entity and have a routine for what is, essentially, the complete unknown is a risk. Although sometimes absolutely necessary for career development, a change in personal circumstances, happiness, or mental health reasons, candidates still reject offers, especially in the current skills short market. If this is happening to you, it might be time to address 1 or more of the points below as these are 10 reasons that candidates reject your job offer;

1. Long interview process - How long is your speed to hire? What I mean is many days did it take from advertising the role/briefing your hiring partners to having a job offer accepted? If you don’t know, it’s definitely something that is worth finding out. If it’s more than 14 days, you need to address it immediately. In some instances, 14 days is still too long and you will miss out on high-demand skill sets. Make the interview process as quick and fluid as possible. Integrate video interviews. If a candidate is working 9-6 in the office, consider meeting them before or after work in a mutually convenient place. Candidates will fill significantly more valued if you show your interest by moving quickly and adapting to their situation to make it easier.
2. Hybrid working and work-life balance - What an interesting time it’s been since 2020. A number of us went from working 8 or 9 hour days 5 days a week in the office. Sitting in rush hour traffic or on packed trains for an hour to an hour and a half on either side. In 2022, that sounds insane. Although, as a manager, I agree, that collaboration is much better in person than over the phone or video calls, since being given it people have realised that they actually quite like having a better work-life balance. They quite like being able to take the dog out for a walk at lunchtime or to be able to do the school run and log on a bit earlier or later. Think of it this way, if you work 9 hours a day and it takes you an hour and a half on either side to commute, you’re out of the house for 12 hours a day. Assuming you sleep 8 hours a night, that leaves 4 hours a day for anything else. Now if you have to cook for yourself and spend an hour exercising, that leaves 2 hours. Imagine only having 10 hours in the week as downtime. No wonder so many people used to burn out. Finding the right balance is important and a number of companies have now adopted 2 days in and 3 days at home policy. I’ve had people reject a role and take another because of 1 more day in the office.
3. Inflated salaries - Now this is a dangerous topic. In the past 2 years, we’ve had Brexit, COVID, and IR35. All of these things affected the employment market. The lorry driver shortage is the prime example of this. Skilled candidates from Europe elected to move home due to Brexit. COVID led to people having decreased financial spending. IR35 affected a number of contractors which led to their costs going up. What also happened during COVID is that meant candidates that would have otherwise moved during that time didn’t for job security. They’re coming out of that period now with a slightly inflated sense of self-worth as they felt they should have been on a higher salary 2 years ago.
4. You don’t value them enough - With that being said in the above point, as you probably saw because it was well publicised in the media, the COVID period left a lot of people looking for work or on furlough with reduced salaries. We aren’t in that market anymore. If you’re underpaying for a role by £5k, you will struggle to find the right candidates as now candidates have a lot more choice as it seems every company at the moment is onboarding in some way. If someone is looking for £70k and you want them on board, offering them £65k to make it slightly cheaper or to be in line with similar salaries in the company can cause rejection.
5. Bad advice from recruiters - Now I don’t want to knock my industry as there are plenty of highly skilled recruiters with intricate market knowledge that actually provide an excellent service to candidates and clients (as much as I’d love to tell you that only we do). However, what we do is subjective and based on experience and market knowledge. There are also recruiters out there who will provide bad advice (such as telling you you’re worth £20k more in the market to get you on the shortlist for their particular job and to get you to push for a higher salary in other processes). This is a hard one to advise on. You can be selective on the agencies that you work with but you can’t be selective on the agencies that candidates go to and listen to. 
6. Not selling your company or the opportunity enough - Traditionally, an interview would be a candidate telling you why they want to work for you. It’s 2022, this just isn’t the case anymore. In the City of London alone, there are currently 553 Financial Controller jobs listed on Indeed. Competition is fierce for good talent. You need to be a brand ambassador for your company and the opportunity. There’s no one better placed to tell them how amazing the company is than you, as you already work there and live it day to day. Trust me, it has significantly more value coming from you than a recruiter. Not to say that our opinion isn’t important but imagine if you were comparing restaurant reviews. Would you trust an opinion more if it was from someone who ate there once or from someone who ate there all the time, had an intricate knowledge of the processes, and knew all the staff?
7. No room for progression - This is really important for people looking to move. A number of candidates that I speak to in large companies are looking to move because they’ve hit a glass ceiling where they are. One FTSE250 company that I know of had 40 middle managers apply for the same promotion. Having structured career development and progression opportunities is important and making that clear during the interview process can really get candidates bought into the process.
8. They’re not looking for the right reasons/counter offers - We’ve all been there. We’ve had a bad day and decided we’re leaving. We’ve maybe had a look on some job boards and applied to a couple of roles whilst feeling this level of emotion. Some people take this 1 step further and actually meet other companies, all because of 1 bad day or 1 bad week. Some candidates also use a job offer to get a higher salary or better conditions where they are with no intention of actually leaving. There’s 1 question that you can ask in interviews to counteract this; Is there anything your current company could do to get you to stay?
9. Fear - People can have all the best intentions of doing something right up until the point that they have to make the decision. Just look at the number of people that look to go bungee jumping or sky diving, tell everyone about it, and then freeze from fear when looking at the drop. Everyone always has doubts and anxiety. The only way to counteract this when hiring is to really sell the role and the company to anyone new coming in. Let them meet or speak to people actually working there at a similar level. The more they know, the less anxiety there is.
10. Gut feel - This one is the most annoying as there isn’t really anything that you can do about it. A gut feeling is something that all of us have had at some point, feeling a certain way without being able to put our finger on it. I’ve had candidates go through a wonderful process, be really bought into the company, and still reject the offer for a gut feeling with no real justification. It’s rare, but it happens. If this happens to you, there probably isn’t something right with the job/culture/company fit and, although frustrating, it’s better to move on than try to resolve it.

I hope this list helps with onboarding. I’m happy to have a conversation with you about how you can improve on any of the above as well as consulting on your process. My service is completely free of charge until I successfully place a candidate with you or we sign a retainer agreement. 

For an impartial conversation about your own job search, if you are looking to hire in the next quarter or for any other help, guidance or advice, please reach out to me on 07773 643082 or email me at tom.naughton@savantrecruitment.com.