I've hired a lot of people, and especially in the last few years finance departments running with tight budgets have been a bear to work with. We'd often have an approved req and go through the process but then couldn't cut the actual offer for some period of time for opaque reasons, and sometimes we'd have to play politics to get it to happen.
I don't think the bulk of the delay is because you're a backup candidiate, I think you're the victim of internal process failure or secretive budget restrictions, especially in earnings call season when the reorg/layoff/acquisition/whatever hasn't dropped publicly yet. Even when we had a backup candidate, once we really truly were able to extend an offer we would not let anybody sit on it for more than a few days. That said, maybe the boss came back and sent out offer #1 with a deadline of Friday, but it's still going to be settled one way or the other ASAP.
Anyway, totally reasonable to follow up with the recruiter, and it's also totally reasonable to mention that you have other options that have a decision date coming up. Desirable, even--when I really wanted to get somebody in, telling my SVP "hey, we have a really good candidate and they have another offer with a deadline of Friday, can we please get this unstuck?" absolutely worked (sometimes) to get it done. If they're still talking to you I think there's hope. Nothing to hang your hat on but I would not give up.
I'm with psteinx about this being a signal about what it's like to work there, too. I would guess senior management is bad at committing to decisions. Very imprecise signal, though, could be all kinds of things at play.
I don't think the bulk of the delay is because you're a backup candidiate, I think you're the victim of internal process failure or secretive budget restrictions, especially in earnings call season when the reorg/layoff/acquisition/whatever hasn't dropped publicly yet. Even when we had a backup candidate, once we really truly were able to extend an offer we would not let anybody sit on it for more than a few days. That said, maybe the boss came back and sent out offer #1 with a deadline of Friday, but it's still going to be settled one way or the other ASAP.
Anyway, totally reasonable to follow up with the recruiter, and it's also totally reasonable to mention that you have other options that have a decision date coming up. Desirable, even--when I really wanted to get somebody in, telling my SVP "hey, we have a really good candidate and they have another offer with a deadline of Friday, can we please get this unstuck?" absolutely worked (sometimes) to get it done. If they're still talking to you I think there's hope. Nothing to hang your hat on but I would not give up.
I'm with psteinx about this being a signal about what it's like to work there, too. I would guess senior management is bad at committing to decisions. Very imprecise signal, though, could be all kinds of things at play.
Statistics: Posted by glitchy — Sat Aug 03, 2024 2:21 pm — Replies 45 — Views 4222