I recently read an excellent Career Journal article – Speed Date a Potential Employer And Get an Offer That Same Day. A point made in the article is to include a response deadline when extending an offer to a candidate.
The author puts in the following quote:
“Time kills all deals,” he says. “I’ve had clients that lost out on candidates because they went the traditional way and dragged their feet for three or four weeks.”
No one is making you, as an employer, change how you hire. If you want to take 3, 4 or even more weeks to run your hiring process, that is your choice. Remember, you are looking at a salesperson and they make their living by having multiple deals in the pipeline at various stages in the process. They are rewarded when they close. So don’t assume that just because you want to wait a week or two to move a candidate to the next step in the process that the candidate will be idly waiting for you. More than likely, they are moving forward with other deals.
So my advice is to keep your process moving, make the necessary decisions and move candidates to a conclusion!