There’s nothing more heartbreaking than spending your time sourcing the right candidate, preparing them for interview, your client loving them and offering them the job, only to be rejected. It can leave a sour taste for your client and also leave you without that sweet fee.

Candidates are still hard to lock down, but it’s not only a candidate-centric market anymore. With fewer jobs going around, you need to keep your clients happy or else they’ll look elsewhere. Fewer jobs and candidates make the recruitment industry like a shark tank, so you need to be in your best game or there are hundreds of other recruiters happy to prove their worth. But then again, a candidate changing their mind isn’t your fault. 

Why do candidates reject job offers?

There’s a plethora of reasons candidates might change their minds about a job offer after an interview, but some are preventable. You don’t want to just be sending any job to every candidate to try and boost your chances of a placement. In the same way, you can’t just send a big list of all the candidates you have available to your clients. You need to match them meticulously and ensure that the client can offer what the candidate wants and vice versa. On the Reddit thread "Have you ever rejected a job offer, or accepted a job and rejected it? What was the reason?" we took a look at anonymous candidates' answers...

Money talks…

It comes as no surprise that one of the most common reasons for rejections comes down to the salary. If you have a client who is willing to pay less than the candidate is after, you’re wasting everyone's time and it won’t end well.

The best way to avoid this is to be completely transparent about the salary and provide the salary range upfront before any time is wasted.

Reddit answers:

• "Not enough money!"
• "Insufficient salary offer."
• "The pay was misleading. It included the cost of benefits and potential bonuses. "

Culture matters!

Company benefits and values are other popular reasons for candidates saying no. The old “Wolf of Wall Street” work hard, play hard mentality is a HUGE turn-off for most job seekers. Truly understanding your client and candidate prevents mismatches like this from happening. So do your research and be more like a corporate cupid!

• "If they say they're a "work hard, play hard" company, you want to get out of there."
• "The company referred to their workforce as a "family". I hate that. It's emotionally manipulative and has no place in the business world, IMO."

Experience is everything!

Another reason that crept up was about the hiring experience as a whole. This could be unorganised interview processes or waiting too long to hear back. This anonymous Reddit comment hit the nail on the head. If you have a poor hiring experience, what would it be like when they actually joined the company?

• "Chaotic interviewing process. If they can't manage to make a good impression during the hiring process, it'd have been even worse when I joined the company."

Although there are many factors out of your control, there are steps you can take to prevent candidates from being shocked by low-ball offers, cultures that they don’t “vibe” with and messy hiring experiences. Full transparency and honest conversations are the best things you can offer to your candidates and clients. But, if you’re looking for a seamless hiring solution that’ll keep your candidate and client experiences top tier, our products from video sales messaging, video interview software and candidate submission portals can definitely help with that 😏