In my experience two days is low. 5-10 days is more common, and most companies are fairly willing to negotiate beyond that given some circumstances. It's not common to see candidates rejected if they try to accept an offer after it explodes.
I'm not sure anyone 'should' be offended by an exploding offer. There are lots of potential factors at play. You only see people talking about exploding offers of employment when the window is relatively small - no one bats an eye when given 45 days to accept a job offer, as that should give plenty of time to find other competitive offers. It's those 3-5 day figures where candidates tend to think they smell a rat.
No one wants to be forced into a decision at gunpoint, which is essentially what a short notice exploding offer becomes. Part of this is also dependent upon the length of the interview process and how much detail is given. If you interview with a company 10 times over a 6 week period, I don't think a short window for acceptance is overly limiting for most candidates.
We often see candidates trying to expedite the offer process in order to receive offers around the same time. Candidates are at their most advantageous position when they hold multiple active job offers, and they have the opportunity to leverage them off each other (I'm not suggesting this tactic). Yet when companies try to expedite the acceptance process, suddenly we feel that there is something dubious at play. Candidates want companies to make quick (and positive) hiring decisions, yet want to take their time to maximize their ability to shop for offers.
More senior talent is less of a commodity than an entry-level candidate, so you might expect more junior level candidates will see exploding offers more often than senior candidates. Senior talent can also leverage their experience a bit more in order to get windows increased if necessary.
I don't think they should be offended as much as they should be curious as to why the company employs such tactics (assuming again that the window is short).
> We often see candidates trying to expedite the offer process in order to receive offers around the same time.
As a candidate, what would be the best tactics to achieve that objective? Say I have 6-8 candidate employers, from mature startup to enterprise in size, and I'm moderately senior. My approach would be to do the phone screens with them all, and narrow it down to about 4 companies to interview with in person, then do that all in a single week, planning on accepting somewhere at the end of the next week.
To maximize the chances of offers coming in around the same time, I generally suggest that candidates stagger applications as a first tactic. Generally speaking, we expect smaller companies or firms with lower levels of bureaucracy (not always the case) to move quicker, so one should apply to those last since they can usually be more agile.
Once in the interview process, you can try to expedite some interview processes while slowing down others. So you might ask one company to push an interview up and another to push an interview back. Once an offer is about to be presented, asking questions can help delay a bit as well - you could ask all your questions at once in an email if you want a speedy reply, and you could ask questions in a live meeting or call (that requires scheduling) if you want to buy yourself a few days.
> Thanks. Also wondering: should more senior people be offended by exploding offers. Architects, team leads, etc?
If anything, they should be less offended. Companies are often simultaneously hiring multiple junior developers, so it's less necessary to make purely sequential offers.
Technical leads, on the other hand, are typically hired for a specific need. Given their cost, companies rarely are hiring multiple leads simultaneously. Hence, parallelism of offers is impossible. Plus, since all senior devs are in high demand, employers want to make offers to as many as possible—before someone else snaps it up.
Hence, exploding offers are a completely justifiable hiring tool.
> I don't see a CEO or even vp being given two days to decide.
In an early-stage company, even two days is a lot for a high-level executive hire. At the point that an offer is made, the interview process should have been so thorough that it can be accepted within hours.
There could be some highly specific situations where a two day exploding offer could be necessary for the business. That in itself doesn't make the offer unacceptable, and that also doesn't necessarily warrant a 'steer clear' warning for readers without more context. I wouldn't judge this company based on a single known two day exploding offer without further details.
If you had ever worked with me you'd know how protective I am of my candidates, sometimes to my own detriment financially. Companies pay the bills, but when they act poorly I don't defend them - I try to correct their bad behavior and explain to them why it will hurt them in the long run.
I would encourage any client that a policy of having all offers explode in 2 days would be bad from a PR perspective and probably result in losing good talent.
If it happened once, and the company had a strong business justification, I personally would not think that this singular action would reflect the company's overall business tactics. Again, it would have to be a good reason - perhaps one that even protects another candidate or current company employee.
