Would you still go to a job interview if you’d been offered a job elsewhere?

[silverdoorframe]

As an employer, I’ve had this happen twice this year. A candidate has come to an interview, we’ve offered the job only for them to turn it down as they’d already accepted a job elsewhere but just wanted to see if we could offer anything better before they started in their new role.

For me as an interviewer, we put a lot of effort and time into interviews, we prep questions, provide refreshments, offer a tour of working area and want to make sure the candidate gets a good impression of us too. Interviews work both ways.

When a candidate comes along even though they’ve already accepted a job elsewhere, it feels like a waste of everyone’s time and the equivalent of going to view a house with absolutely no intention of buying. Fair play to the candidates for actually admitting it but at the same time, I don’t think it reflects well on them. Also, if they were to accept our offer, I feel bad for the other employer who thought they’d successfully recruited, only for the applicant to pull out.

Is this a common thing now?

In the first instance, we offered the day after the interview. The candidate asked for a few hours to think about it but then turned it down and said she’d accepted another job the week before but had wanted to see how she got on with us ‘just in case’. Fair play for admitting it.

Wow - the public sector takes a month to inform a successful candidate? That’s crazy.
I bet they lose a lot of candidates because of that. I’ve always tried to contact all candidates within 24 hours (or first working day after a weekend).

I wouldn’t have told you I’d accepted the other job already, just that I had two offers and on reflection I’d decided to take the other one.

^^ this
yes I would go for an interview despite having accepted an offer. Offers get pulled at the last minute. As a candidate who needs a job I have to hedge my bets. And yes I have seen someone get very close to their starting date and the job get pulled due to a restructure. So I like to have a contingency plan! And that may mean having several roles in the pipeline all the way to my start date, and even slightly beyond. (If I’m not 100% about the role)

but I would not tell you!!! I would also put the effort into the interview.

it’s great you put so much effort in but not all employers do and it is impossible to know until you meet them. The number of interviews I have had where the interviewer is clearly disinterested even before we have begun, is quite astonishing.

I guess it’s because they do more interviews that the number of posts they’re recruiting for. The one I went to was 18 positions over 5 sites but they did interviews over 2 weeks. Then they will collate all the results and emails will go out at the same time with feedback but I’d say from my experience - application to interview is around 3 months and then results to starting another 3 months so 6 months on average to start a role in the public sector. It’s exhausting.
Surprisingly I don’t think they do loose candidates as so many people seem to want to be in the public sector due to the benefits. It’s certainly more flexible than the private sector but then the private sector when I compare is more efficient. Depends what you’re after I suppose.

To add - the public sector is wide and varied @silverdoorframe and not all recruitment processes will be the same

Ok, that makes sense and given that people really want the jobs, the public sector has the luxury of taking their time.

This will blow your mind, but most people turn up to an interview when they already have a job - sometimes one they’ve been working in for years. They might come to your interview and decide not to hand their notice in at that job, when again presumably their existing employer thinks they’ve completed recruitment and don’t need to recruit.

I don’t see any difference between going for an interview for a new job while you’re already employed, and going for an interview when you’ve already accepted a job offer. In both instances, I’m seeing if the job I’m interviewing for is better than what is already on offer to me.

And I do a lot of recruiting and interviewing in my role too.