When job offer delay stalls your life

For how much longer must I wait for the promised confirmation of the job offer? This was the question Peter pondered over as he considered the best way to respond to a job search process that seemed to have been brought to its knees by a promise of a job offer that seemed to take forever to be confirmed. He had attended the job interview a month ago and had received an email confirmation from the potential employer that he had been considered as the best candidate. He however had been told to await the letter of offer as the official communication of the consideration.

As he celebrated the tentative offer, he hoped with every passing day that he would receive the job offer to enable him make the decision regarding writing the official resignation letter to his current employer. In his mind, he started off the resignation process and even drafted the resignation letter which he safely saved in his computer awaiting the opportune time to share it with his supervisor and the HR office.

A day passed, then a week and later another. He started panicking. What was going on. He perused through his emails again to confirm that he had actually being considered for the position as he imagined it could have been a beautiful dream he was responding to. It was true. He had the means to verify the communication.

As anxiety started to settle in, Peter started becoming unsettled. He had already whispered to a few of his workmates about his planned exit and every morning, the staff would check with him whether he had eventually resigned. This was not funny. It was pressure. At the beginning, he would tell them that the communication from the other end was about to land, but as time passed, he lost words. He started wondering why he had got the courage to disclose to others about his imminent departure as his disclosure was hurting him.

As time went by, he realized that he was losing grip of his daily engagements. His motivation levels were at their lowest point. He knew he was only present physically since his spirit and mind had already resigned. He wondered what the best response to the experience was.

Peter’s experience could be a reflection of what some of you are going through as you read this article. Waiting for official communication of a job offer can be a traumatizing experience. Traumatising it is because mentally, the job seeker disengages from the current employer and is left with no clear mental engagement with regard to a job offer. The job seeker suspends several critical decisions, both at personal and official levels as she realises that the new job offer would most likely have an impact on the implementation of the decision. At that point, you may need to decide on whether to renew a loan or not, pay rent for the month or not or even make a decision with regard to your children’s education. Should you change their school if the new job possibly takes you to a different county?

These decisions are crucial hence the need for quick responses from the potential employer. For the recruiters following this train of thought, I suggest to you to be keen to the recruitment process. It is important to note that the processes engage many persons emotionally to an extent that their lives easily stall as they await the feedback on the hiring process. It is hence important to consider prompt feedback to the potential employees to enable them move on with life as you engage in internal consultations.

You would rather send them a text with some updates implying that you are awaiting some form of authorization from a senior manager who may have flown out or a certain board member who needs to sign off the offer. As brief as this communication could appear to you as a recruiter, it could mean life or otherwise to an anxious job seeker.