Growth by Design
Growth by Design isn’t just another business podcast; it’s a conversation about building stronger organizations by design, not by chance. Each week, we dive into the realities leaders and entrepreneurs face: scaling teams, navigating shifting markets, and overcoming hurdles every business encounters. You’ll hear timeless strategies paired with fresh insights from years of partnering with companies across industries. Expect discussions on empowering employees, strengthening culture, tackling sales challenges, marketing missteps, and accounting lessons learned the hard way. We’ll share case studies, break down current market climates, and spotlight trends that matter today and tomorrow. Each episode also features a Recruitment Tip of the Week with practical, actionable advice on hiring, retention, and talent strategy. Growth by Design gives leaders the tools, context, and perspective to put into practice immediately.
Because growth doesn’t happen by accident—it happens by design.
Growth by Design
Counteroffers, Ghosting & Hiring Rhythm: How to Win Top Talent in a Tight Market
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Counteroffers, Ghosting & Hiring Rhythm: How to Win Top Talent in a Tight Market | Growth by Design
Welcome back to Growth by Design, brought to you by RX2 Solutions, because growth does not happen by accident, it happens by design. In this episode, Ross Rosner and Rob Graham dig into why job offer acceptances are falling even as the market for skilled workers gets tighter, and what owners can do about counteroffers, ghosting, and a hiring process that has quietly gotten too slow.
The conversation starts with what is actually happening. Skilled candidates are holding several offers at once, accepting some and rescinding others, and disappearing somewhere between the interview and the first day. SHRM found that 41% of candidates ghost an employer at some point in the process. Ross Rosner and Rob Graham use a hot housing-market story to make the point: when demand is high, the buyer who moves fast and clean wins, and the one who drags their feet loses the house.
From there they get practical. They break down the steps that quietly cost you good people, like extra interview rounds, re-keyed applications, and assessment and personality tests that rarely earn their place. They explain why counteroffers usually fail, with roughly 60% of people who accept one gone within 12 to 18 months, and why you should plan to backfill anyway. The fix is hiring rhythm: pre-approve your salary bands, aim for good enough instead of perfect, and give a fast, clear decision.
If you are a leader losing candidates between the offer and the start date, this episode gives you a simple framework and a 48-hour rule you can put to work this week.
Episode Timeline
00:00 Introduction to Growth by Design
00:24 Why Offers Are Falling
01:47 Housing Market Hiring Parallel
03:04 Summer Slowdowns and Ghosting
03:31 Fix the Hiring Rhythm
04:08 Assessments That Waste Time
06:10 Speed Wins in Hot Markets
06:40 Counteroffers Rarely Work
08:14 Candidate Experience Signals Culture
11:20 Good Enough Hiring Framework
13:27 48 Hour Decision Rule
15:14 Market Shift and Wrap Up
If this episode matched what you are seeing with offers and ghosting, hit Like so more owners find it.
If you have lost a hire between the offer and day one, or saved one, leave a Comment. Ross Rosner and Rob Graham want to hear it.
And if you want more practical insight on hiring, talent strategy, and building teams that last, Subscribe to Growth by Design so you never miss an episode.
Growth doesn't happen by accident. It happens by design.
Hi, and welcome back to Growth by Design, brought to you by RX2 Solutions. Because growth doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design. I'm Rob Graham. And I'm Ross Rosner. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about accounter offers, ghosting, and all that kind of fun. Very fun. Exactly. So we've noticed that in the second half of 2025 and the start of this year, right, that acceptances on jobs have been actually declining. And it's not that the market's going down. It's it's actually probably the opposite. The market's getting tighter for highly skilled individuals out there. And what organizations are getting is, and we've talked about this a lot, the media is portraying the world ending, things like that. But for skilled workers across industries, they are a very valuable commodity in today's market. And it's not too uncommon to see organiz or people who have two or three or four job offers at different companies, and then they might accept one, they might accept two, but they're holding out for the third one, and then they get the third one, and now they rescind the first two. And organizations and companies, specifically small business, need to know how to kind of handle this, counter it, and do everything about that.
SPEAKER_01I see a lot of parallels between what we do and the housing market. For example, a house went up for sale on my street. We walked by it as a family, saw the sign, I looked it up, and it was for sale. It had been on the market for one day. It had over a thousand views on Zillow, and I think like 50 people saved it. The house ended up lasting two days on the market, and I met two people who put offers on it. The one, the real estate agent, said, Don't even put the offer on it. You're not going to come close. The other one waived every contingency, bridged the gap between the potential appraisal and what the mortgage was willing to pay. Basically, had no way of getting out of it, even offered a few free months of rent to the people in the house as a sweetener, and it didn't happen. And, you know, we're not saying waive all the contingencies and so you get it, but what we're seeing is companies seem to be adding steps to their process just for the sake of adding steps. It's slowing things down, and that makes the situation right now ripe for someone to have a competing offer and then ultimately get that offer, not tell you about it, and then ghost you to get the offer from you kind of, you know, because they don't want to be left with one in the hand, two in the bush type deal. They they want to keep everything in play and and they end up turning you down and you have no idea what happened.
SPEAKER_00And this is even more important going into the summertime. Right. Because people are gonna be off on vacation, they're gonna be doing stuff with their kids and their families, and your managers and your hiring team's not gonna be there, right?
SPEAKER_01You're gonna have a process where you need to meet with five people. Cool. Well, one person's in France for two weeks, they get back, and then another person's going on vacation for a week. You can't get the whole team together, and now you know, a process that you could have done in two weeks now takes two months, and now the person has three other offers on the table.
SPEAKER_00So in in 2025, Sherm said that 41% of the candidates at some point in that interview process ghosted that a company, just straight up gone, right? And you hinted on this a little bit. It's about your hiring rhythm, like how your company moves people through the process. You know, if it's a good smooth process, you're gonna have a better retention on those candidates and people going through there. If it's clunky and out of rhythm, you're gonna you're gonna be struggling with it. So when we're kind of going through and coaching organizations and and working with different clients here, there are a couple major bottlenecks that we always try to say, do you really need this? One of them being assessment testing. And we get into it and we'll sit there and say, what's the purpose of this test? At the end of the day, what is the result that you're looking for in order to hire somebody from this?
SPEAKER_01Well, right, is the test, you know, some some companies say it's make or break. If you don't get X score on this test, then you're out of the process. It could be the perfect candidate that's just had a bad day taking a test. Other companies will say, well, we use it to help guide our next round of interviews. That makes more sense, but why do you even need the test to do that? Can't you figure that out on your own if the person has what you're looking for from a trade standpoint?
SPEAKER_00And then the other issue that people run into is that okay, are you taking these tests online? If you are, who else is doing it? Oh, right, right, yeah. Or come into our office and take a test. My favorite is the personality test before someone gets hired. Because I could sit there and be any personality that I need to be on a test to get the job.
SPEAKER_01Well, didn't you take two personality tests and get two completely different results? You had that that what is your animal test?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, what with the what is your animal animal? And I was able to identify as every animal on the spectrum there based off of certain answers. Right. And, you know, people who go through and choose their animal correctly, right? It's interesting. There is an absolute psychology and behavioral on how to coach and and work with the people at that point, but that's a post-hire kind of thing. And that's you know, the animal is a fun game. Like it's like, hey, what are you? Are you a cool animal or are you not a cool animal? Right. I mean, they should have picked all cool animals for the thing, but that's a that's a different, that's not my test.
SPEAKER_01But but going back to the house analogy, like if you want to get a house right now in a hot market, your real estate agent's telling you to waive everything, just speed everything up to get a chance to get it. It's almost the same thing in a hot candidate market. And despite what you're hearing out there, candidates that are in highly desired areas, they're they're gonna have multiple options, they have all sorts of choices. And if you're gonna be the company that has not the best rhythm when it comes to getting them through the process, they have other options and they're gonna go with them. Yep.
SPEAKER_00And then let's say you're the company that's losing that person, right? So now you're gonna you're stuck in a process of now I gotta go interview and fill this person. Wait a minute. Let's pause. Let me make a counter offer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, let me retain the person that's leaving.
SPEAKER_00That never works out. It's like 60% of the people who take counter offers are gone in 12 to 18 months. I bet it's higher than that. They're they're looking to leave, and no amount of money is really gonna make them stay. Because most people don't leave strictly because of a monetary difference.
SPEAKER_01I mean, if the company that we worked at, if they paid me enough, I probably would have dealt with all their BS.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but they would have had to pay of it.
SPEAKER_01It would have been a lot, and I probably eventually would have wanted to leave anyway. Correct. Because the issues weren't going away. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And the counter offers, you can make it, you might be able to get a band-aid on it. But from a you know, a small business standpoint, start looking to replace that person, even if you do make a counter. And it it could just simply be scaling somebody else up in your organization. It's just being cognizant of is that once you make that counter offer, you got a 50-50 chance if that person is going to be there in the next year.
SPEAKER_01I mean, and shifting gears a little bit, but in the same way that you're evaluating a candidate on how responsive they're being to you, how they're answering your interview questions, all of those things. They're evaluating you also on how your process is working. Because the way that you're the first impression of the relationship from their side to you is how you handle the whole interviewing and onboarding process. Yep. And with these good candidates, they have choices. If you have a clunky interview process, you're probably it's probably gonna be clunky to work there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if you have a clunky onboarding process, it's probably gonna be clunky for you to work. All of it, it it's all about precision, how smooth it is, and if it was enjoyable. The more paperwork, the more data fields these people need to fill out.
SPEAKER_01The the application where you have to resubmit every part of your resume manually.
SPEAKER_00It's like, what are you what are you doing? And I get that there's organizations out there that need to have it, right? A manual paper application.
SPEAKER_01But no, this is like an online form. Like you apply, you submit your resume, and then they manually make you go in and redo your resume. Like what? Like, I'm gonna you're gonna find some inconsistency between the two things I put in. It just it just the whole overall point is why gunk up the process with things that don't add value or shouldn't need to add value. It you just don't need to do it.
SPEAKER_00No, and speed wins when hiring these employees. All things being equal, right? Right. So, you know, if you like someone, don't delay an offer. There's no point to it. Right. And it's it's like, why would you wait? Why do you need to wait an hour you know a week to get them an offer? Make it a priority within the organization to have the approvals for this salary ban, and then have it going over that. So if you're gonna give someone a hundred grand and you know you can go up to $120,000, know that so that you can go back and forth in that negotiation with that person and not like car salesman. Well, I gotta go back to my manager now, let me think of where I need to be.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, I mean, ever we rarely have clients go above asking salary, but when they do, the candidate has accepted it every time. Yeah. I mean, the other thing is you you can interview someone and give them any assessment that you want, but you're not really gonna know what they're like until you get them in the chair. And the only way to get them in the chair, it's actually counterintuitive. You think you know, you're gonna do all this stuff and have this perfect setup. When you get them in the chair, you're gonna know exactly what it's gonna be like, but it rarely happens that way. Just get them in the chair and see what they're actually like. And if it doesn't work out, you can part ways, hopefully, as friends. But if you go and try to do all these things that lose the rhythm of the process, you might never get them in the chair to begin with.
SPEAKER_00The importance of that is crucial because you're not just gonna see how they perform the job, but how they interact with the people in your company and how they embody what you're trying to accomplish.
SPEAKER_01And and to be clear, we're not saying get rid of all of your assessments and take it, take all of your safeguards out. No, just make sure that your process is every step of it is adding value for you and for the candidate. And figure out where the line is good enough. You don't need to have it be perfect. There's a point where it's good enough, and when it hits that point, the additional things you're adding, I think there's like a curve that describes it. But basically, at some point, you hit good enough, and everything that you're adding on top of it's a good curve. Well, sure, you're adding just diminishing returns on top of it. Yeah, figure out where that line is, maybe even just a little bit before it. If it's good enough, make them the offer, get them in the seat.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And you know, don't don't hire just because the one thing with that is don't hire just because you think it's good enough. If you're not sure or certain on the person, cut them loose. Say, hey, thank you very much for your interview process. Unfortunately, yeah, at this time we're not gonna be moving forward with you in the process. That's okay. You can be as picky as you possibly want. I'm not saying you should, but you can be.
SPEAKER_01The ironic thing is when a client does that, and then three months later they say, Hey, we've been interviewing people, this person was the best. Can you go back to the first one we rolled out and see if they're still interested? And we're like, We can we can try. I don't know what they're gonna say, but we can try. It's it almost feels like Romeo and Juliet at the end with that way.
SPEAKER_00It's still having a good rhythm to your hiring process. Well, yeah, of course. Yeah, you're you're going through, it's enjoyable for your your employees, it's enjoyable for the candidate, and there's a definitive end. It's either yes, you're interested, no, you're not. It's let's we're not gonna sit there and wait three weeks after last interview just for feedback, right? You know, there's in our industry there's the curse of being the first person who interviews, and we joke about it. I've done it myself. I'm like, hey Ross, uh, good news, bad news, you're the first person they're interviewing for this job. Yeah, they need two more. You might be waiting a little bit, right? If the first person you interview is good, hire the first person. Yeah, hire them. Why not? You know, when we work with candidates, we typically tell them you got 48 hours to figure out if you want to accept the job or not. Two days is reasonable. So for the recruiting tip here for you is to use the same internal clock for your organization.
SPEAKER_0148 hours from when they have all the information they need to make a decision. Yes. You don't want to just say 48 hours and they're like, Cool, can you get me the benefits package that you haven't given me yet? And then you give it to them like a day and a half later, like, cool, you have half a day to make a decision. Make sure they have all the information. Cool, you know, when can you have a decision by? All right, 48 hours sounds good.
SPEAKER_00Yep. And then for but I'm saying from the hiring side of things, like 48 hours after that person interviews, figure out figure out if you want to have move them on to the next step. Sure. Don't set set post-interview meetings. They don't need to be long, it's probably gonna be a 15-minute meeting. Ross, you like them? Yeah, like they're Rob. Did you like them? No. Why? Okay, out. Or yes, okay, let's move on to the next step, right? Because the market has absolutely shifted, and your hiring process needs to adapt with how it's changing.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and it also needs to adapt to when, especially this time of year, when people are gonna be out, right? But the problem with having a panel kind of debrief, every single person in that room is evaluating the person on something different. The director, you know, the owner wants someone like someone with new blood to come in that's hard charging, that's gonna shake things up. The VP wants things to stay status quo because they're just kind of running their playbook and and they're you know sailing off into the sunset in five years they're gonna retire.
SPEAKER_00So essentially what we're saying is that the market has shifted, right? It's different, it's it's more aggressive, it's it's unique for these highly skilled technical employees. And because of that, you need to adapt the rhythm and the process of how you're hiring and onboarding these candidates so that you're not losing them, they're not ghosting you, and that you're able to utilize your time efficiently while attracting and retaining the top talent.
SPEAKER_01Completely agree. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Growth by Design, where growth does not happen by accident, it happens by design. Look forward to seeing you next time.