Sourcing and acquiring new talent is rarely as simple as placing a job advertisement, sifting through résumés, and choosing a candidate. Your team will have to invest time and resources in assessing and interviewing potential candidates, which can take months.
Nothing is more frustrating than making it to the final stage only for a candidate to turn you down. A low offer acceptance rate prolongs the hiring process, forcing you to rework your offer or even start over. It also increases costs and can negatively affect team productivity.
What is offer acceptance rate?
The offer acceptance rate is the percentage of the company’s job offers taken up by a candidate. OAR can be expressed as follows:
Offer Acceptance Rate = (Number of Offers Accepted ÷ Number of Offers Extended) × 100
Measuring offer acceptance rate
To get an accurate measure of your offer acceptance rate, you need to consider several factors:
Tracking over time
To make sure you get the full picture of your OAR and you’re not just seeing a moment in time, track offer acceptance over different months, quarterly, and annually.
This helps you to see where various factors might be affecting your OAR, like economic conditions or changes you’ve made in your hiring process.
Segment analysis
Once you’ve collected a meaningful amount of data, break it down into different segments. For example, you might look at offer acceptance rates by job function, department, location, and seniority level.
This helps you spot areas where acceptance rates are disproportionately low and need more attention.
Candidate feedback
Collect feedback from candidates who turn down offers. Understanding what led to them declining can help you to find areas where you can improve.
Competitive benchmarking
Compare your OAR with industry benchmarks. This helps gauge whether your acceptance rate is competitive and in line with the industry average, or if your organization needs to make significant adjustments.
Customer data platforms can help by analyzing industry trends and competitor compensation data.
Factors influencing offer acceptance rates
When you feel like you’ve put a pretty competitive offer on the table, It can be disheartening and frustrating when a candidate turns it down.
Understanding why your offer was declined is often the first step to improving your OAR.
Compensation and benefits
Candidates will often compare your salary and benefits with what other companies offer for similar roles. If you’re not competitive enough, they might decline.
Company culture and reputation
Moving to a new job can be a big life change, and candidates need to feel confident that it is somewhere they’ll be happy spending their time. Your company’s culture, work environment, and overall reputation can all impact the candidate’s decision.
Job role and responsibilities
While candidates will be attracted by a competitive salary, they also want to see themselves growing with your company. If they don’t see future opportunities, they might decline your offer in favor of a company that better aligns with their long-term goals.
Location and flexible working
Candidates are starting to expect a certain degree of flexibility in their working arrangements. Factors like office location, commuting time, or a lack of flexible working options could create barriers for candidates accepting your offer.
Timing and communication
When you’re interviewing a candidate, remember that they’re also evaluating your company during the hiring process. Any delays in getting back to candidates or poor communication, whether verbally or through poorly presented or inaccessible enterprise digital signage, could make them doubt your organization and how you treat your employees.
Utilizing voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology can enhance communication clarity and reliability during the hiring process. This could be by a phone call, message, or video conference.
Strategies to improve offer acceptance rates
Improving your offer acceptance rate isn’t an overnight process and often requires looking at both the recruitment process and overall candidate experience.
Here are some strategies to consider:
Offer better compensation packages
Keep a close eye on what other companies in your industry are offering and regularly compare your own compensation package to make sure it’s competitive.
To make your offer more attractive, you might want to include additional perks to the base salary. These could be things like performance bonuses, profit share schemes, or company discounts. This would have the added benefit of motivating your employees to perform better, particularly in competitive groups like an outsourced sales team.
Tailor job offers to candidates
Different candidates will have their own priorities that will influence their decision to accept your offer. Personalize your offers based on candidates’ individual needs and what is most important to them. It could be flexible working options, additional vacation time, or professional development opportunities, such as earning a data science certificate.
CRM recruiting tools can help you discover common priorities by collecting and organizing information on candidates’ preferences and past interactions.
Provide clear career progression
Candidates are more likely to accept offers when they see a clear path for career growth within the organization. Highlight opportunities for advancement and professional development during the recruitment process.
Streamline the hiring process
If you leave candidates waiting around for an update or formal offer, they might lose confidence in you and follow up other opportunities, which could lead to them accepting a competitor’s offer.
Make sure your recruiting process is as efficient as possible. An event tracking guide can help you to identify and eliminate any bottlenecks that cause delays.
Improve candidate experience
From the application process through to the final offer, ensure the candidate experience is positive – that means good communication, timely updates, and a respectful interview process.
For example, if you’re conducting telephone interviews, consider using cloud PBX services that offer high-quality, reliable voice connections. A positive experience shows that you value your relationship with a candidate, and makes them more likely to accept your offer.
Address counteroffers
Good candidates may be in high demand, so even if they like your offer they could be tempted by counteroffers from their current employers or other companies.
To avoid your offer being sidelined, be ready and armed to tackle counteroffers, such as offering a signing bonus or expedited benefits.
Follow-up communication
After extending an offer, maintain regular communication with the candidate. This allows you to respond to any questions or concerns they may have before they start second-guessing their decision.
Why OAR matters in hiring
The job market is more competitive than ever, and good candidates often have multiple offers. If you want to attract the best talent, you need to measure your OAR.
You don’t need a data science certificate to know low OAR could signal flaws in your recruiting process that are stopping you from securing top candidates, making your hiring process more lengthy and resource-intensive than it needs to be. Monitoring this metric will help you anticipate and act upon what matters most to potential candidates.
