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When you’re interviewing for a job and the job looks interesting and the company also likes you, it’s an intoxicating feeling. It’s not any different from the other side of the desk. When you meet a candidate whose energy and experience you like and you start to think “This person could help us a lot,” you go through the same steps.
You learn more about your candidate as you talk more and more, and you start to picture this person in the job.
They start to picture themselves in the job. Your conversations get looser and more friendly. Finally you make a job offer. You hope they accept. Generally they do. Once the deal is sealed, you celebrate.
By the time you get to the end of a hiring process, your hiring manager wants to hire you as badly as you want the job. That’s why it’s so important to watch your manners and professionalism at the tail end of a recruiting process. Don’t make a last-minute mistake that will cost you the job offer!
Here five tragic, late-in-the-game job-search mistakes job-seekers make that cost them job offers.
1. Throwing a huge, unexpected monkey wrench into the conversation, for instance by declaring that you need a three-month sabbatical mid-next-year, that you can’t start your job for six weeks or that you have to work from home, all the time.
2. Flunking your reference and/or background check. Most employers will overlook details in a reference-checking and employment verification process. If they run into gaping holes or information that doesn’t jibe with what you told them, that could be the end.
3. Going silent. Some candidates hear “We want you to join us — look for our offer in the mail” and tune out of the process. Two and a half weeks later a frantic recruiter is texting them around the clock, asking “Where did you disappear to?” ”I went to Vegas with my buddies to celebrate,” says the candidate, who is no longer under consideration for the job.
4. Pulling the organization into a bidding war. A bidding war is not a bad thing. It’s a business tactic like any other. You are entitled to create a bidding war among the employers who want to hire you if you feel you should. Some employers will play ball and others won’t. They’ll say “We’re happy for you — we’re thrilled that you are so much in demand right now. We don’t want to engage in a bidding war. Our offer is our offer” or they may even withdraw their offer at that point. You cannot blame them if they do. If you and they agreed that a certain salary would get you on board and they offered that salary but now you are telling them that other employers will pay you more, they may say “All the best to you in that case!” and close your file.
5. Finally, you can lose a job offer by failing a drug test, at those employers that use drug testing as part of their recruiting process.
Double-check your references and your employment and educational histories before you apply for a job — not afterward! Make sure that you are ready to pass a drug screen if you apply to work at a company that uses a drug screen in its process. Keep track of the interview pipelines you are in and don’t let any balls drop contact-wise – particularly as you get close to receiving a job offer!
If you have special requirements or requests like a vacation in the near term or the ability to work from home, get those topics on the table before you get the job offer.
Once they like you and you like them, you are way more than halfway to the finish line in your job search. Be careful not to blow it at the last minute!
Liz Ryan is the CEO and founder of Human Workplace. Follow her on Twitter and read the rest of her Forbes.com columns here.
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