It Now Takes Almost Twice as Long to Get Hired as It Did in 2010

If it feels like it's taking forever for an employer to get back to you, you're not alone

by Michelle Jamrisko
June 18, 2015 — 9:00 AM EDT

Be patient, job seekers: It's taking much longer to get hired in the U.S.

Candidates had to wait about 22.9 days for an offer or rejection in 2014, up from 12.6 days four years earlier, according to survey data from online job-search network Glassdoor Inc.

The longer wait time is largely due to a rise in the use of background checks for jobs, which have gotten cheaper to conduct, "as a proxy for judgment and quality of candidates for jobs" across fields, said Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor's chief economist.

The data show that government agencies, which typically encounter more regulatory hurdles in hiring and often conduct background checks before adding staff, take the longest to close the deal. Those averaged a 60-day wait, helping to explain why Washington blew other U.S. cities out of the water in this dubious superlative:



The average duration was 34.4 days in the nation's capital, more than nine days longer than the second-longest, Portland, of 25 of the biggest samples.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-18/it-now-takes-almost-twice-as-long-to-get-hired-as-it-did-in-2010