From BusinessWeek.com’s When The Candidate Says No:
Then, disaster strikes. The candidate says no. In the blink of an eye, the story is rewritten. He’s self-important; she doesn’t know what she’s passing up. We didn’t land the candidate, so the candidate is flawed. Ever heard this story before? Of course—it’s one of Aesop’s most famous fables, The Fox and the Grapes. Once the fox realized the grapes were out of reach, he decided they were sour grapes, anyway. Who needs ’em?
It’s laughable to see this story played out over and over, but it has a sobering side. When we invest time and energy in selling a candidate on our organization and the deal doesn’t happen, there is a strong urge to make the candidate the bad guy. But that’s ridiculous—we were excited about having this person on our team, right up until the moment we got the brush-off. After the fact, we can’t rewrite history just because we lost the deal.
Why not just accept that not all candidates accept the job offers we extend? Companies will always have to contend with a certain rate of rejection. But if we blame the candidate for failing to be enchanted with our generosity, we lose the opportunity to spot flaws in our hiring processes.
Well, there certainly is a whole lotta truth in those paragraphs. The first flaw we would look for – is your process moving along in a timely manner? More times than not, we see unneeded delays introduced by hiring managers who do not dedicate the time to consistently moving candidates through the hiring process.