Employers Taking 30+ Days to Extend Offers After Interview Date

How long can a college student expect to wait for a job offer after an interview? And, after an offer is extended, how long will he or she have to accept or reject it?

NACE’s 2012 Recruiting Benchmarks Survey found that, on average, employers hiring new college graduates take 24.2 business days to extend an offer to a college student after an interview. If you add in weekend and holiday days, that means that the employers are asking the average candidate to wait more than 30 days from the date of their interview to receive an offer of employment. Once an offer has been extended, employers then give the candidate an average of 14.1 business days to make a decision.

“The average interview-to-offer cycle time in the 2012 survey is consistent with that from previous years,” says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “These results show that there tends to be a relatively narrow timeframe during which the offer follows the interview.”

There are significant differences in interview-to-offer cycle times across industries. Government agencies have one of the longer interview-to-offer cycles with a 38-day average. However, they are not alone as employers in other industries—such as recreation and hospitality (39.5 days), engineering services (30.3 days), and construction (30 days)—have similar timeframes.

By contrast, recruiters from computer and electronics manufacturers (16 days), accounting services (17 days), and miscellaneous business services (17.5 days) take an average of fewer than 18 days to deliver their offers.