1. Implementing Recruiting
  2. Define Reasons to Decline Job Offers

Define Reasons to Decline Job Offers

You can gather feedback when candidates decline job offers. Candidates can select a reason from a list of reasons, if this is configured, and enter any comments they want to provide.

With that information, your organization can gather valuable data for the recruiting teams, both immediate and long-term. Recruiters can get notified right away when a candidate declines their job offer, which withdraws their job application. The notification can contain enough information for the recruiter to take immediate action for the candidate if desired. Longer term, these responses build up a picture of the decisions and concerns of your organization's selected candidates. Why didn't your top candidates accept your job offers? Capturing this information and analyzing it to understand trends can greatly improve your organization's future offers and future hiring strategies.

Here's what to do

  • Define Reasons

  • Configure the Candidate Selection Process

  • Add the Candidate Selection Process to Job Requisitions

  • Configure Notifications

Define Reasons

You first need to define reasons for declining job offers. You can use the reasons that already exist and which are used at various points in the candidate lifecycle. You can also create new reasons, then place these reasons into a Reason Group.

For details, see Define Reasons to Reject and Withdraw Job Applications.

Configure the Candidate Selection Process

You need to enable the Allow Candidate Reason and Comment on Withdraw option in the candidate selection process.

  1. In the Setup and Maintenance work area, go to:

    • Offering: Recruiting and Candidate Experience

    • Functional Area: Candidate Job Applications

    • Task: Candidate Selection Process Configuration

  2. Open an existing process.

  3. Click the Offer phase.

  4. Go to the Phase Details: Offer section and click the Edit icon.

  5. Set the option Allow Candidate Reason and Comment on Withdraw to Yes so that candidates can provide a free-text comment as they decline their job offer. Candidates are declining to be considered any further for this job and thereby moving themselves to the state Withdrawn by Candidate.

  6. Click Save.

  7. Go to the States for Phase: Offer section.

  8. (Optional) Click the Reason Group menu for the Withdrawn by Candidate state and select the group that contains the reasons to decline the offer. If you don't associate any reason group with the Withdrawn by Candidate state, no list of reasons will be shown but the candidate will still have the opportunity to enter free-text comments as they decline the offer.

Add the Candidate Selection Process to Job Requisitions

For job offers to gather the reasons why candidates declined the offers, offers need to be associated with requisitions whose candidate selection process is configured to accept this feedback.

Configure Notifications

Standard notifications can be sent to the offer team when a candidate declines their job offer:

  • IRC_JobOffer_Declined_Internal

  • IRC_JobOffer_Declined_External

You may want to configure this notification to include the feedback provided by the candidate. If so, add the following tokens:

  • JobOfferCandidateDeclineReason

  • JobOfferCandidateDeclineComment