I haven’t been on a ton of job interviews in my life (maybe 10-15 in person interviews overall), but I think for every job I’ve been hired for I was hired either the day of or the day after the interview.
And in every interview where the interviewer said something like ‘we have several more interviews, we will let you know in a couple weeks’ I never got hired.
Has anyone heard the second statement, and then found out that they got the job 1-2 weeks later?
No one who has ever hired me has said anything of the kind to me at the end of an interview after which I was offered the job.
I have never been offered the job after an interview wherein something like that was said to me.
Yes, it’s anecdotal and not data, but that’s the truth.
I interview people for government jobs. We have to follow a very rigid protocol, which includes interviewing ALL the qualified applicants who wish to be interviewed. So it’s not at all uncommon for me to end up offering the job to an early interviewee weeks after that individual’s interview, but only shortly after we finally got the final interviewees taken care of.
Ditto. I have done dozens of interview panels over the years. Routinely one of the panel members will outline how long we expect it to take for an offer to be made. Usually, it takes more than a week, far longer if referees are hard to contact.
I was just on an interview panel today. Government job, so we have to interview everyone who is qualified. It’s also for a special assignment so it’s only open to current employees. We will be done with the interviews Tuesday - but we still told all the candidates it will be 2-3 weeks. Because even though we will have made a choice by Wednesday at the very latest, there’s a lot of bureaucracy that happens between the panel making a choice and the candidate being notified.
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I’ve had it all ways. The first job I got after graduation was offered to me on the spot. They flew me 600 miles, picked me up at the airport, and drove me to the facility. I talked to my potential manager, had a future colleague take me out to lunch, was introduced to the appropriate VP, the company president, and was offered the position before 5 PM.
With subsequent jobs, it varied, a lot. The worst delay was at least 4 weeks, during which they re-ran the newspaper ad, twice (yes, in the olden days, companies would run newspaper ads to fill employment positions, as strange as that seems). Not only was this the longest delay between my initial interview and being called back, it also followed the longest stretch of unemployment (or, as I like to view it, self-employment) of my career. After 4 weeks, they called me back in, and in another two weeks, I was offered the job. Apparently, they couldn’t find anybody better (and, obviously, not for a lack of looking). I held that job for nearly 15 years, when I left it to work for the world leader in the industry.
My experience pales compared to my wife’s. She interviewed for her current job (her ‘perfect job’) over the 4th of July weekend. They told her “we have two other applicants we have to speak with” and she came home. It was after Thanksgiving before they called back and offered her the position. Yes, it was a very nice offer.
It just goes to show, though, you can’t ever tell. In general, however, IME if it is a small company, and they like the way you interviewed and think you will do the job they have, they will offer you the job on the spot. The bigger the organization, the more hoops they hiring manager has to go through to hire anyone, so it just takes longer.
I interviewed for a job they called me two months later to tell me I got the job and an offer would be coming. Then two weeks later they send me the offer then they got mad at me for spending a month negotiating a better offer. I only lasted there for 6 months.
My shortest was my first interview looking for a post college job. I walked in the door, said “Hi”, the interviewer said “I’m not here to interview you I’m here to offer you a job.” I also negotiated that one for a while and ended up taking a much better offer else where that offered me a job about 2 weeks after my interview with them.
Just make sure you follow up. A nice email thanking them for the interview and a couple of quick bites on how excited you are and relevant experience. Then, if they said a week, call (preferred) or email to check the status, highlight the more you’ve thought about it the really good fit you see. What are the next steps?
Depending on the position, it can have a round of 3-5 interviews scheduled by HR. It can take a week or two to get thru the candidate pool. Depending on the position, they may have to interview everyone before the next step.
Net net, it could very well be legitimate scheduling, and the only thing you can do is be patient and follow up without being pushy (unless the position calls for pushy).
Don’t waste the week. Hound them everyday. Ask, “When do I start”?
This has worked for me every time.
I have never gotten a job offer in the spot. One of the questions that job search advisers give is to ask at the end of the interview what their expected timeline is for hiring and when IV asked they always have more interviews. All my offers have taken several weeks at least.
Maybe it depends on the field.
I think I’ve had 5 jobs in my life, all of them I was offered the job either the day of or the day after the interview.
I have heard the second statement, gave up, and then got hired. But usually not.
Even in very low end jobs I’ve only had an on-the-spot yes when hiring was a continuous process, not a one off role to fill. I’ve had a ‘We really like you but we have four more people interviewing, we’ll let you know on Friday’ and got the job, I’ve had ‘I think you’d be a really good fit, I just have to confirm with my boss and not got the job’ (though I’m pretty sure I know why in that case).
I’ve not had companies call me and tell me the interview’s cancelled because they filled the vacancy, they generally go through the motions and interview, even if they’re pretty sure they’ve picked the candidate. If they’re going to carry on and interview the people they’d arranged to, they may as well be open to the possibility that angels will descend from the sky blaring trumpets and declaring a later applicant to be perfect.
As an interviewer, I’ve done it, even if there was just one candidate. It was mostly to give us time to discuss the candidate with other team members, and to avoid giving the candidate false hope if we weren’t 100% sure.
It must be the field. I’ve always been offered the job at or near the end of the interview. I had one awkward interview where I no longer would consider the job after the interview, yet I was asked when I could start.
When I’ve had a job offer the day of the interview, it’s always been pretty clear that they’d already made their decision before the interview, and just had to make sure that there weren’t any red flags that came up once they saw me in person. One of them was a last-minute opening where I got the first contact on a Friday for a job that absolutely needed to start on the following Tuesday, and another, I was personally recommended by the guy I was going to be replacing.
Well, my first “real job” I was basically asked at the end of the interview, “when can you start”. Medium size company.
The next one, and then the one for my present job ( of 30 years so far ) the interviews ended on a relatively positive note ( that I could tell from the overall vibe ) but they said more or less “well, we’ll let you know…” and then I received a phone call later or the next day saying I was hired. Big companies.
At the higher levels, they dont usually offer you on the spot.
I work for the state and have been on many hiring committees… As said above, the protocol is rigid. Typically six people for phone interviews and the top three of those come in for a face to face. All candidates must be interviewed and neutrally scored and if there is a protected class and they aren’t hired, a justification must be written. No one is EVER hired on the spot. Period. HR and diversity have to approve every single hire. If a Nobel Laureate walked in and wanted to be a researcher for us for minimum wage, the process would be followed. When we tell you it’ll be a couple days, that’s how long it will be.
I usually put out a bit of a cattle call for applicants onto job serach sites, and have a flood of responses.
Out of those respsonses, I get a number of poepe who scheudle interviews.
Out of those interviews, I have a number of people who show up.
If you’ve gotten this far, there is a good chance that you’ve gotten the job.
However, if I am only hiring for 1 or 2 spots, then I may actually have more interviews lined up that I need to talk to before I make a decision. Some of those people may not show up.
Once I have extended job offers to people, some number of them show up, some don’t.
Once I have them working for me, some of them work out, some don’t.
Having a candidate or two on the back burner, with a “We’ll let you know in a week or so” is not dishonest at all, as it really is the case that there is a reasonable chance that I will extend them a job offer, but I do not know whether or not I will at the time of the interview.