The Weight of Waiting

I've been the candidate waiting three months for a decision that should have taken three weeks, refreshing my email and wondering what I'd missed in the final interview. I've also been the recruiter caught between a hiring manager who couldn't pull the trigger and a finalist who was fielding other offers, watching the best candidate in our pipeline accept another role while I scheduled "just one more coffee chat to be sure." The instinct to delay feels protective in the moment. You're buying time, gathering data, being thorough. What I didn't see then was how often we're protecting ourselves from the wrong risk entirely. We avoid the discomfort of committing while creating the larger problem of never actually deciding. Understanding this gap, between what delay feels like and what it actually costs, changes what becomes possible on both sides of the hiring table.

The hiring committee had been meeting for six weeks. They'd seen forty-two candidates, narrowed to three finalists, then asked for "just a few more profiles" before deciding. When they finally made an offer eight weeks later, all three finalists had accepted other roles. This wasn't bad luck. It was a system working exactly as designed.

Teams believe waiting produces better decisions. In reality, delay is emotional avoidance wearing a disguise. The costume is called diligence.

Here's what changes when the pattern becomes visible: teams stop searching for perfect candidates and start clarifying what they actually need. Candidates stop interpreting delay as personal inadequacy and start reading it as organizational dysfunction. Both sides gain information that matters.