[david38]

The hypocrisy is that to even get to the point where you have a 24 / 48 hour exploding offer, you (the candidate) had to often wait weeks to get a response to the application, phone screen, on-site, decision.

So I don’t buy this fairness argument. If we’re talking about fairness, the process would be super quick, and then I would get a week to think about a decision that will affect YEARS of my life. To say nothing of things like asking previous salary, salary expectations, etc. Everyone knows why it’s done. If you wanted to be fair, the salary would simply be posted with the criteria that would influence it up or down. There is a reason unions and public sector jobs do this.

Companies have access to far more market salary data than I do. It’s not close to fair.

My job is far more influential to me than the company. It’s 100% of my income and yet I’m only one of many for the company. This should be taken into consideration.

[nickff]

Well, it's an asymmetrical situation; you had to wait to get an initial response, but on the other hand, you can keep interviewing while the offer is on the table. I think the explosion timer is simply a response to the fact that it's not an exclusive relationship (yet), but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out.

I am not even sure how to judge fairness; do you have a specific moral/ethical framework in mind?

[heavenlyblue]

> but the company cannot explore other options while the offer is out.

That’s not how it works in most companies

[bluGill]

Quick can be bad - if someone submits a resume on day one that is good should we hire them or wait a week for someone else to discover the position? If you don't know you want to work for the company until by random chance is shows up in one of your searches as hiring your type of person then you need the time to discover us. As a results policy is we can't interview anyone until the position has been posted for a week, or we have at least 7 people who seem worth interviewing. (you want to be in the former - less competition: we will prefer to wait the full week instead of taking all 7 - though do note that week 1 is posted only to internal transfers in some cases)

In most cases people don't actually have two serious leads to a job at the same time. I know it is potentially years of your life that you need to decide on, but for most people there isn't a choice. If you are on unemployment you need to justify not taking a job offer or you lose benefits (this varies by state/country). Even if that isn't a concern, odds are you have one offer in hand and a few leads that probably won't call you in for an interview anytime soon so again there isn't much hope anyway.

[ric2b]

> if someone submits a resume on day one that is good should we hire them or wait a week for someone else to discover the position?

if some company gives me an offer on day one that is good should I accept it or wait a week for some other company to give me an offer?

It cuts both ways.

> In most cases people don't actually have two serious leads to a job at the same time.

That's common for me, as I usually do a bunch of interviews around the same time when I'm interested in knowing what else is out there.

Most of the time I'm not really paying attention to my LinkedIn unless I see something that immediately catches my attention, which is rare.

> but for most people there isn't a choice.

If there isn't a choice people will decide and reply quickly, you don't need an exploding offer in that case.

[ghaff]

Also if you're at a level where senior people are interviewing you, it can just take a while to make everything happen. (This is particularly true if you're interviewing with people who travel a lot.) I have at least some reason to believe that being hired for my current position (which I've had for over ten years) wasn't controversial but it still took a couple months for it to happen.

[majormajor]

One thing I am very careful about now is to try to keep offer terms from being a surprise.

If I know what to expect comp- and offer-wise earlier, then an exploding offer is just the culmination of the weeks of lead-up and thinking on it.

But sometimes recruiters don't want to give you that until offer stage. Other times, it's not so hard to get.