Candidate Experience: 6 Tips To Deal With Offer Rejections

It’s quite exciting when you finally find the perfect candidate that checks all the boxes of a job requirement after going through a few rounds of assessments. With the finish line of the hiring process in sight, you move on to send out a job offer to your chosen candidate. But then, the candidate declines your job offer at the last minute.

As an HR professional or hiring manager, the way you handle a candidate rejecting your offer will say a lot about your company in terms of candidate experience.

Receiving a job offer rejection can be hurtful. When you send a job offer to a most preferred candidate, you hope they want the job as much as you want to hire them. However, when you have the opposite of your expectations, how do you handle the situation to keep a good candidate experience? Let’s look at six tips to deal with a candidate’s offer rejection without affecting the candidate’s experience of the hiring process.

What to do when a candidate declines the job offer

If you receive a candidate offer rejection mail or call, use the following tips to handle the situation.

Be polite in your response

It can be frustrating when a candidate turns down your job offer just after you’ve spent a considerable amount of time with them throughout the recruitment process. But be careful not to burn any bridges or negatively impair the existing relationship between you and your candidate with your response. All in all, you should avoid taking a candidate’s offer rejection personally. One way to respond to a job offer rejection is to be polite. Express your disappointment but do not go overboard while doing that. For example, you can say something like, “Thank you for informing me about your decision. Your skills would make an incredible impact on the company’s workflow, but we are sad that you have decided to go in a different direction. We wish you well in your future endeavors.” Always remember that you run a reputable business and that candidates leave online reviews about a company’s recruitment process. Anything other than a thoughtful polite response from you can mess up feedback on candidate experience in your recruitment process.

Request feedback

Feedbacks are vital to gain a level of understanding as to why your candidate is rejecting your offer. When a candidate rejects your offer, it is best to make a feedback request via email instead of by phone. Many candidates might be afraid to give honest feedback on the phone. Getting feedback gives you valuable insights to help you to shape a better future approach and even improve the candidate experience. It might also help you determine if the reason for the offer rejection is something that requires you to revisit the job offer immediately and help you keep the candidate.

Revisit your offer

A candidate would often reject a job offer for some known reasons. The majority of job offer rejections are based on either the offer package being too low for the position, the candidate receiving a better offer from another company, or a poor candidate experience. If you get feedback showing that the candidate isn’t happy with the offer package, you could revisit and make a better offer to the candidate. You can work with the candidate to strike a balance that makes both parties happy but resist trying to force the candidate to accept the job.

Check your employer brand

One of the reasons a candidate might reject a job offer is if the employer has a negative online review from previous applicants or workers. It can be a result of poor candidate experience from previous hiring managers. It is crucial to analyze the employer brand if a candidate mentions this in the feedback they give following an offer rejection. If you are hiring for a client or company, you should always review your employer’s brand and what people are saying about the brand. Social media can help in this course.

Make necessary changes

You should not discount a candidate over rejection of your job offer. A situation like this might help you look inward into making the necessary changes to the job offer or the recruiting process. If the candidate faults the hiring process, you may want to make the changes. Changes might include that you switch to a seamless and more efficient recruiting software that allows for a better candidate experience. An award-winning recruitment software like EVA-REC can improve the candidate experience of your recruitment process.

Move on with other candidates

A most preferred candidate might reject an offer based on perceived limitations in the package, as mentioned earlier. While you can’t find a balance with them, you can move on with the next available candidate on your talent pipeline that meets the job requirements. But leveraging an ATS saves you the stress and time of shuffling through hundreds of resumes or starting the process over again. With an advanced applicant tracking system like EVA-REC, you can easily pinpoint top candidates in your talent pipelines at a single glance.

Conclusion

EVA-REC is an on-demand ATS that automates and improves the hiring process with AI technology. From small businesses to industry giants – we aim to offer fully customizable world-class features that help create a rich and immersive hiring experience for recruiters and candidates. With EVA-REC, companies can drive merit-based, objective, and fair hiring practices that minimize bias without dehumanizing the hiring process. Request a free demo today and get to see how our award-winning ATS can help you streamline your hiring like never before.

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