How long should job seekers be expected to wait?

The hiring process can already feel exhausting, but being left in the dark for weeks makes it even worse. After making it through multiple interviews, this candidate heard nothing for nearly a month and accepted a better offer elsewhere. When the original company finally responded, they tried to make the candidate feel guilty for moving on. Instead of apologizing for the delay, they blamed the very person they had kept waiting.

I’m not sure how companies can really expect someone to wait a whole month for a response. According to the story, the OP was waiting for any sign from them, but since nobody reached out (not even to give him an update on how the process was working), he ended up accepting another offer that sounded more appealing.

If that were me, I would have done the same thing. We have bills to pay, mortgage, groceries… endless things we need money for, so wasting time while we wait for any answer is not going to cut it… not in this economy especially. And the worst part of all is that the company actually got mad when the candidate told him we had already accepted another offer.

That’s the biggest issue of all: them being angry at you and making you look bad for actually needing to work and not being able to wait. I’m sure they must have realized the enormous time they had while choosing the candidate, because he actually called and messaged them for any kind of update, and the only thing he got was a vague answer that didn’t help at all.

This story can be a great lesson for the company, which needs to know that they cannot expect candidates to sit around and wait until they can come up with any sort of decision. In the end, they are the ones who need to fill the position, and having everyone waiting makes them and the candidates lose time.