It’s not ALWAYS their fault…
📢 PSA: We need to stop shaming recruiters for delays in hiring.
If you really want to direct your anger about a terrible interview or hiring experience – let’s direct blame to its rightful place.
Let me preface this by saying – yes, there are some BAD recruiters with no customer service skills out there, this is not an excuse for those folks.
Here’s what you need to consider:
1. recruiters own about 20% of the recruitment process – the rest, generally falls in the hands of hiring managers, and other stakeholders. If you interviewed with a recruiter and now feel like you’ve been waiting weeks for a response, know this: Your recruiter is probably super frustrated because they sent your resume to the hiring manager weeks ago – and have been following up daily without response. In some cases, they might be sending you some generic messages to keep you engaged, but in other cases, they really don’t know what to tell you because they don’t know anything.
2: Most corporate hiring is a consensus driven NIGHTMARE. Your recruiter shares your resume with a Hiring leader and the Hiring leader might decide to interview you – Let’s say those two conversations play out WITHIN a week in a best case scenario – here’s what really happens next (in most cases)…
✔️ Hiring manager doesn’t “own their budget” so they need their boss to weigh in….another interview.
✔️ Hiring manager knows this role works with 3 other people in the company and wants to ensure those folks like whoever is hired…so they all have to weigh in….3+more interviews.
✔️ Hiring manager works in a culture where HR has to “sign off” on all people decisions – so now HR needs to weigh in….another interview (or minimally an internal meeting where HR has to know all the details of why they want to hire you – comp, etc.).
Even in the most EFFICIENT timeline – the turnaround here is likely 2-3 weeks based on availability. Now comes – the debriefing.
Your recruiter is on pins and needles hoping all 5-6 people feel exactly the way they did about your candidacy – but everyone now feels empowered to share their “opinion” about what the role should be and if they felt YOU’RE good enough. Most of them are likely not fully calibrated on the job, so half the time – this results in the “let’s see more candidates for comparison” decision. Now you’re in limbo for another 2-3 weeks.
Your recruiter is likely juggling 12-25 requisitions with 2-10 candidates on each requisition going through this process. My guess is they are all doing their best to keep you informed. They WANT to close the job quickly and make you happy!
Do we need to do better? Absolutely. However, even in the most well-intentioned companies, hiring= COSTS to the business, therefore, the dynamics above are the reality of how a true hiring decision usually gets made, no matter how badly your recruiters are trying to promote a positive “candidate experience”.
Corporate Blog 