It’s a dilemma I’m sure many hiring managers and human
resources professionals have faced; they’ve just interviewed the perfect
candidate for a vacancy and are keen to offer, but they already have further
interviews scheduled. Should they risk losing the perfect candidate by waiting
until all interviews have been conducted, or should they just make an offer and
either cancel the other interviews or conduct them out of courtesy, even though
they have no chance of securing the role?
On some occasions the decision will be guided by the perfect
candidate’s availability. If they’re already under offer elsewhere, they may
not be prepared to wait until the end of the interview process, especially if
they’re spread over a lengthy period. Then it becomes a case of whether the
employer is prepared to risk letting them go elsewhere whilst they meet the
remaining applicants.
I've recently had this scenario unfold for one of my
clients, and due to business demands and risk of losing their preferred
candidate they decided to offer the role to him before completing the scheduled
round of interviews and called wishing to cancel the final remaining interview.
The candidate whose interview was cancelled was
understandably disappointed. He’d already invested time preparing for it and was
eager to meet with the client to prove his suitability to the role. Fortunately
in this instance, he was understanding of the situation and hadn’t pinned all
his hopes on the interview.
Personally however, I don’t feel the situation was handled
well and the client ran the risk of damaging their employer brand by having a
job applicant come away from the process feeling aggrieved. This particular
candidate happened to be the understanding type, but that’s not always going to
be the case, and it’s well documented that people like to share negative
experiences more than the positive.
If the client needed to make a quick decision on this hire,
the sensible option would be to bunch all the interviews together over the course
of a day or two. In the real world this is easier said than done, but if a
candidate can only commit to interviewing a few days after the others it should
be made clear to them from the outset that there is a chance the interview will
be cancelled if an appropriate candidate is identified beforehand. Then there can
be no surprises and the dilemma of whether to cancel or honour the interview is
already decided.
