How to handle when an employee declines your offer

So you’ve found your dream candidate and you’ve gone through first stage and second stage interviews. You are sure they are “the one” and that spare pair of hands you’ve been waiting for.

Finally you get to the final stages and they turn around and decide to either accept another offer or stay where they are.

We are then moving into a really pivotal moment here as a company or a recruiter that can make or break the relationship and here’s the thing. If you take one thing from this article it is this.

What you do is you wish them well.

You keep the door open, give them your number if things change and if you were really keen on them as a potential employee for the company offer to keep in touch and check in from time to time. That is the best case scenario for both you as their recruiter and the company you are representing and here's why.

People change their mind

It is extremely common for someone to decline an offer and mull over that decision quite some time post the offer decline. If they have been counteroffered we know there is a high instance of those people in 6 months recognising the problems still exist and looking for another role or perhaps they are counteroffered a role and it doesn’t work out the way they had hoped it would pan out. You need to leave that door wide open for them to come back and you need to also offer an opportunity for you to counteract any objections in the future and get some insight into why they have decided not to move forward with your offer.

How you handle the rejection shows character

Respond graciously and resist the need to display anger or frustration. I have heard many times and more often then I would like to count where a hiring manager or HR representative has been visibly annoyed about the offer decline and expressed their frustration to the candidate. The problem you have here is that you’ve just completely shut that door as an option which can be a short sighted approach to your talent management strategy.

Circumstances change and a case of right role, wrong timing

Maybe it was the right role at the wrong time and they feel they are not quite ready to make the move. Perhaps their personal circumstances have changed and the job is a case of right job, wrong time. They may come back in the future if you leave that door open and continue to check in with them on time to time to see how they are travelling in their new role or with their current employed.

Feedback will enhance your employee value proposition

Ask for feedback that you can use to influence your future hires. Was it the salary they declined? Was it the job conditions/flexibility/bonus structure? Did the hiring process take too long and you just “missed the boat”. Look at this as an opportunity to enhance your hiring process and continually do it better next time.

Look at the bigger picture. The candidate experience is paramount for the hiring process. I recently had a call from a Manager who had declined a role with me and he was now looking for help to hire his own team and from our hiring relationship he had confidence in what the candidate experience would be so trusted me to hire the right people for his team.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the frustrations of multiple offers and candidates declining roles in a market where unemployment is the lowest in 45 years and that’s only natural.

However if we take a look at how we manage these conversations in advance we can either build a talent pipeline that will grow our business or potentially cut off opportunities before they’ve even started.

If you are looking at your talent strategy and partnering with an agency that takes a holistic approach to hiring please get in touch with us at [email protected].