A selection process looks different from the inside than from the outside. Those on the committee know the reason behind every delay: a diary that will not line up, an extra stakeholder who wants to sit in after all, a decision that sits at a higher level. The candidate knows none of this. All he/she sees is what happens, and above all what does not.
Ask a client halfway through how the process is going and the answer is usually positive. The interviews went well, the committee is enthusiastic, one more round has been added to be thorough. Put the same question to the candidate and the picture tilts: weeks without news after the second interview, a round nobody announced, feedback that stalls because one diary will not line up. Each of these things can be explained on its own. Together they tell the candidate that this organisation does not yet know what it wants. An executive in a good position does not get angry about that. He withdraws politely and you never hear the real reason.
Six interviews and an email
I saw how this plays out on a search for a marketing director at a Dutch organisation that is part of a foreign group. The request came with urgency. With the candidate we put forward, we held two interviews: an in-depth intake and a second conversation. Two interviews were planned at the client. It became four, with various hiring managers and the HR manager.
After the fourth interview, it went quiet. We followed up several times. Eventually an email arrived saying the role had been put on hold. From the first interview to that message, almost three months had passed, for a vacancy that needed filling urgently.
The candidate heard the news from us, with an explanation and with advice on possible next steps. We then guided her towards a comparable role elsewhere, in which she quickly began to perform well. For her, it ended well. The client lost a strong candidate and anyone who has been through a process like that will look at the same name differently next time.
The market gives candidates little reason to wait
That a candidate will not sit out a sluggish process also has to do with the market. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), there were 95 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people in the second quarter of 2026, up from 91 a quarter earlier. Unemployment fell to 3.9 percent. At board level that ratio says little about numbers, but it does indicate the direction: the market is tightening again.
More important is who you are looking for. The executive you want is usually not looking. Dutch labour market researcher Intelligence Group reports that 44.7 percent of workers are not open to other work at all, a group that has grown considerably since the end of 2024. The share of workers who changed jobs in the past year, at 18.1 percent, is the lowest in more than four years. Whoever gets such a person moving has a candidate who does not need anything. That is precisely the candidate who drops out first when the process stalls.
International benchmark research on candidate experience, covering more than 66,000 candidates at 110 organisations, points the same way. The most frequently cited reason for withdrawing was the feeling that the organisation did not respect the candidate’s time during interviews and appointments (32 percent). Lack of communication and follow-up was the biggest complaint. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 17 percent of candidates said they wanted nothing more to do with an employer after a poor experience. That research covers all job levels and does not focus on executives. In my experience the pattern is just as strong at the top, it simply plays out more quietly.
In our own region, too, the demand for people remains. The Dutch employee insurance agency UWV expects around 2,800 additional jobs in Zuid-Kennemerland and IJmond up to and including 2028, although that growth depends on how energy prices develop.
How long a careful process takes
From our own files: a selection procedure consists on average of four interviews. We conduct two ourselves, an intensive intake and a second interview. Two take place at the client. From the first interview to the decision to make an offer takes two to two and a half months in the smoothest case. That is the optimistic scenario, in which everything goes as agreed. Every extra round and every week without feedback comes on top of that.
In our experience, roughly one in ten candidates withdraws in the final stage. We try to keep that number low by keeping candidates openly and clearly informed from the start, so that no doubt needs to arise at the end.
I saw what good looks like when placing a COO at a manufacturing company in the Randstad. Beforehand, we agreed a timeline with the client and settled which internal stakeholders would join when. After each interview the candidates received feedback, so they always knew what the next step was. Those who did not progress received a rejection with a thorough explanation and advice. All the candidates involved stayed interested until the end, including the one who was eventually appointed.
The question before the offer
A rejection by a candidate usually announces itself. Answers get shorter, a meeting is suddenly hard to schedule, questions that used to come stop coming. Those signals are almost always recognised only in hindsight.
Before the final round I therefore ask one question: if you received an offer today, would you accept it? The answer is rarely a wholehearted yes. Often there is another conversation going on elsewhere. Just as often there turns out to be an objection to the scope of the role, because the position has shifted during the interviews from what the first description promised. That is information you can still act on. If you only hear the same answer at the offer stage, it is an announcement.
The same applies to the offer itself. A client who holds back his best proposal to leave room for negotiation runs the risk, with a hesitant candidate, that the first proposal is the one on which that candidate decides whether to look any further. If you want room to manoeuvre, look for it in the content of the role rather than in the terms.
From the other side of the table
For a candidate at this level, applying is not a side matter. He or she conducts interviews alongside a demanding role, often without his own organisation knowing. Every interview costs him/her something and every week of silence leaves room for doubt about the role, about the organisation and sometimes about the move itself.
Last week I had to tell a candidate in the final stage of a finance role at an international client that the choice had fallen on someone else. Such news is never pleasant. What makes the difference is whether the candidate understands why and can use it for a next step. Candidates regularly tell me that they value precisely that detailed feedback, also after a rejection, as well as the guidance throughout the process and the aftercare following a placement. A candidate who is not chosen today may be exactly who you are looking for in two years’ time. How you say goodbye today determines whether that candidate still picks up the phone then.
If you are a candidate in a process that has stalled, ask about the timeline and about who makes the decision. An organisation that has no answer to that is giving you an answer too.
Pace is a governance choice
The pace of an appointment process is often seen as something HR takes care of. Yet a supervisory board or an executive board preparing an appointment shows, through that process, how the organisation makes decisions. The candidate reads it that way too.
What you can control is agreeing in advance how many interview rounds there will be and who will take part, and only reopening that agreement when there is a substantive reason. Agree within how many working days of each interview feedback will follow and who is responsible for it. Settle, too, where the mandate to appoint lies, especially when a parent company or shareholder has a say. In the search for the marketing director, the decision ultimately lay outside the room where the interviews were held. That should have been clear from the start.
Clients who work this way notice it themselves. The feedback we receive from that side closely resembles what candidates tell us and from that experience grows a partnership that goes beyond a single placement.
In closing
Most good candidates are not rejected. They disappear, usually with a friendly email saying the timing is not right after all. To prevent that, you do not need to make the process faster than care allows. Above all, it needs to be predictable. At Fornell Human Capital we therefore agree the timeline at the start of every assignment and keep both sides of the table informed, even when there is briefly nothing to report.