The real cost of losing your top candidate
Your best hire didn’t withdraw. They accepted someone else’s offer.
The least-discussed cost of slow Government recruitment is candidate attrition. Top candidates, particularly those with in-demand skills in digital, data, and ICT, do not wait sixteen weeks. They accept offers from employers who move faster.
Agencies routinely lose preferred candidates between interview and offer. Sometimes they lose them before interview, because the process from application to interview has already taken too long. The cost is not just the lost hire, it is the cost of re-running the round, the interim cost of unfilled duties, and the cumulative effect of repeatedly hiring the second-best candidate.
Speed is not an efficiency argument. It is a talent quality argument. Faster process reaches the same candidates with a better offer, before they accept something else.