Job offer decline has always been a classic case, which is good enough to trigger a war between Recruiters and Candidates.
While Recruiters start with candidates not being ethical enough to honour the Job offer they accepted. The candidates on the other side dig their odd experiences with Recruiters.
While the error is on both sides, there should be a way out.
Where did this all start?
Ideally, when a company extends a Job offer, they inform the candidate to read the job offer thoroughly and respond with their decision within a week or 10 days.
The candidates in turn will do their readings and research about the company in those 7 to 10 days and reply their decisions. Technically 7 to 10 days is a good enough period to decide about a company.
In reality, not many companies are ready to wait for 7 to 10 days for the candidate to respond. Most of them expect an instant response as the positions are immediate needs (Almost all are immediate needs these days 🤷♂️). So, the candidates are left out with no other option but to look at the Pay structure and acknowledge with their acceptance if the offered salary is satisfactory.
The candidate has accepted the job offer since the offered salary is satisfactory. Then why is it that they go for more counter job offers?
That leads us to another issue — ‘The Notice period’ factor. 60 days & 90 days notice periods is the standard practice across companies.
The Notice Period Factor
While Recruiters think extending a job offer to a candidate with 90 days notice period is a burden — since they get ample time to shop for counter offers — we also need to evaluate the other side.
Why should companies have 90 days notice period?
Someone has initiated their resignation for a reason. Be it a personal one like family relocation or travel constraints, or an official one like lack of growth, financial reasons, or politics within the team. They took this decision to quit since they felt detached from the company for some reason.
What good is it going to do to hold the same person in the system for another 90 days? Of course, their role must be transitioned to someone else. But 90 days is a lot for that.
Besides, you may not get the best output from them as before — their commitment levels could have dropped the moment they initiated their resignation. Holding someone in the team who is about to quit in 90 days could negatively impact the existing team members who are contributing at their prime.
After knowing all this, why are companies still holding on to the 90 days notice period?
Is it love for their employees? Maybe. But letting them go sooner will be a better way of expressing it, isn’t it?
So what else then? If people start leaving companies for their dislikes and convenience, there will be hardly anyone left for the business to run.
So, how about we complicate their exit process by extending their notice period? But still people are gonna go after 90 days.
The birth of the trend of hiring Immediate joiners
To stop people from leaving, extending the notice period alone isn’t the only option. What else could be done?
Their hunt for the next job should be made complicated.
What if all the companies start hiring only immediate joiners? People with 90 days notice period won’t make it through the hiring process. The only option for people to leave will be to initiate resignation without taking any offers first.
As they head towards completing their notice period, opportunities will come. But for this to happen, people must be willing to take the risk of resigning without a job in hand — which is not something everyone would dare to do, since jobs and salaries are important for most people running their lives on tight budgets.
Finally, for this trend to take hold, two things must happen:
- Increase the notice period to 90 days
- Decrease job opportunities for people with 90 days notice by introducing the practice of hiring only immediate joiners
Usually the good things take time to spread. Bad things need no publicity, right.
The birth of Offer shopping
The risk-takers go ahead with their resignations regardless and hunt for jobs as their notice period reduces.
The non risk-takers had to wait for opportunities from companies willing to accept 90 days notice. They’re left with no option but to accept an offer from any company fine with their notice period — irrespective of whether the job appeals to them or not. They get the offer, initiate their resignation, and as the weeks pass, their visibility in the talent market grows. Opportunities come knocking. The closer they are to their exit date, the higher their demand. By the time they complete their notice period, they’re sitting on 3 or 4 offers and can choose what benefits them most.
The never ending loop
With that many options, it is very likely the candidate won’t honour the initial offer that helped them start their job search. The initial job offer becomes a diving board. The company that extended it becomes the scapegoat.
After experiencing this enough times, that company decides to stop hiring candidates with 90 days notice and switches to immediate joiners only.
There it goes. It spreads like wildfire.
Companies stop offering candidates with 90 days notice. Candidates get no other option but to mine more offers to finalise one, because companies have already complicated their exit and minimised the opportunities available to them.
It becomes a never ending loop.
So where did it all start?
It all started the moment companies began thinking up meaningless ways to retain their employees.
Still confused? Start reading again from The Notice Period Factor 🙂
Disclaimer: This is purely an imaginative theory to try and understand what could have instilled “The Job Offer Decline War”. Not meant to hurt anyone’s feelings.
Hey! Can someone lie in a Disclaimer? 🤫