What is offer acceptance rate?
Offer acceptance rate is the share of job offers that candidates accept. Workable calculates it by dividing the number of offers accepted by the number of offers extended.
It measures the last step of the process, where a hiring decision either becomes a hire or becomes a restart.
What does a low offer acceptance rate tell you?
That something which should have been tested earlier was not. Usually it is one of three things: the package is below what the market pays, the decision took long enough for another offer to arrive, or the candidate's expectations were never checked before the offer.
In IT and engineering, the counter-offer from the current employer is a fourth cause. It is predictable, and it can be discussed openly before the offer rather than discovered after it.
How is offer acceptance rate different from the counter-offer problem?
Offer acceptance rate counts refusals at the moment of the offer. A counter-offer can also arrive after acceptance, during the notice period, and turn an accepted offer into a late withdrawal.
A healthy acceptance rate with frequent withdrawals during notice points to the same weakness as a low acceptance rate, just later: the candidate's reasons for leaving were not understood.
What does offer acceptance rate reward, and what can go wrong?
It rewards offers that get accepted, which can push teams to make offers only when they are sure of the answer. A rate close to one hundred per cent can mean the process filters out ambitious candidates early, or that offers are pitched safely rather than competitively.
Read it with the reasons for refusal, not alone. A refusal tells you more than an acceptance, but only if someone asks why. Sparagus discusses salary expectations and competing processes before the offer stage on each search for that reason.
