What do you think is a reasonable waiting time to hear from a potential employer after interviewing for a position?

According to a study conducted by Shortlister, 71% of Brits believe that 7 days is more than enough time for a potential employer to provide feedback after an interview.

Average Interview Feedback Time in the UK

The study looked at response times by region and discovered that candidates in Scotland waited the longest to get any sort of feedback (36 days), the South West of England experienced a slightly shorter waiting time of 29 days, and the shortest wait was the South East of England at 17 days.

The study went on to survey job seekers by industry to determine which was the worst at providing feedback. Coming in last place was the retail industry, where over half the applicants received no feedback at all. At the other end of the spectrum was the legal industry with only 10% of applicants not receiving feedback.

Candidates and Employers Missing Out

The biggest issue with these long waiting times is not that they only affect unsuccessful candidates but successful ones as well. The result of this is that a third of successful candidates accept job offers from their second choice of employer because the anxiety of waiting for feedback becomes too much and the real possibility of unemployment becomes all too real.

To put that in perspective, currently 1 out every 3 British job applicants are working in a job that is actually their second choice, simply because their first choice employer took too long to respond.

This means that a lot of employers are missing out on the perfect candidate because they took too long to respond. So as a heads up to all potential employers, 71.6% of candidates feel that a seven-day time frame is a reasonable one to wait to hear back from them.