Job Offer Decline War — How it all could have started?

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 for them. Then why is 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 got ample time to shop for counter offers, we also need to evaluate on the other side.

Why should companies have 90 days notice period?

Someone has initiated his/her resignation for some reason. Be it a personal one like family relocation, travel constraints, or Be it official ones like lack of growth, financial reasons, politics within team. They had taken this decision to quit since they felt detached from the company for some reasons.

What good is it going to do, if we are going to hold the same person in the system for another 90 days. Of course, their roles must be swapped to someone else and proper transition must happen. But still 90 days is a lot for that.

Besides that, you may not get the best output from them as before as their commitment levels could have gone low just that they have 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 prime.

After knowing all this, why are companies still holding on to the 90 days notice period?

Is it the love for their employees? May be. 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 their 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 next job should be made complicated.

What if all the companies start hiring only immediate joiners? So, people with 90 days notice period aren’t going to make it to the hiring process.

The only option for people to leave will be, to initiate resignation without taking any offers. As they head towards completing their notice periods, they will get opportunities.

For this to happen, people must be willing to take that risk of initiating their resignations without any job opportunity in hand. This is not something everyone would dare to do, since jobs and salaries are important for most of them as they run their lives on tight budgets.

Even if such risk takers leave the organisation, most people will not leave unless they get a job from a company that is willing to hire someone with 90 days notice period.

Finally for this to happen, two things must be done

• Increase the notice period to 90 days
• Decrease the job opportunities for people with 90 days notice by introducing the practice of hiring immediate joiners

Usually the good things take time to spread. Bad things need no publicity right.

The birth of Offer shopping

The risk-takers irrespective of whether they are going to succeed or fail, they go ahead with their resignations and then hunt for jobs as their notice period reduces.

The non risk-takers had to wait for a job opportunity from companies who accept candidates with 90 days notice period.

They are left with no other option but to accept Job offers from any company that is fine with their 90 days notice period. They get the offer and initiate their resignation, irrespective of whether the offered job is of like to them or not. As their notice period gets reduced as weeks pass by, their visibility increases amidst the talent market and the job opportunities come knocking their front doors. The closer they are to their exit date in their current companies, the more becomes their demand. Opportunity rushes to them in volumes. By the time they complete their notice period, they hold minimum 3 or 4 job offers. The candidates get enough options to choose a job that benefit them the most.

The Never ending loop

With these many counter offers, it is very likely that the candidates are not going to honour the initial job offer that helped them to initiate their resignation.

So, the initial job offer becomes more of a diving board to kickstart their job search. And the company that extended that initial job offer becomes a scapegoat in the middle.

After experiencing this odd experience for quite a few times with different candidates. That company in turn takes the decision to not hire candidates with 90 days notice period, but hire only immediate joiners.

There it goes. It starts spreading like a wild fire.

The companies stop offering candidates with 90 days notice period. The candidates get no other option but to mine more offers to finalise one, as the companies have already complicated their exit and minimised the opportunities that come to them.

It becomes a never ending loop.

So where did it all start?

It all started the moment companies started thinking about those meaningless ways to retain their employees.

Still confused? Now start reading again from ‘The Notice period factor’ 🙂

Disclaimer: This blog post 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? 🤫