Indecision Is the Silent Killer of Great Hires
The job has been open for weeks, maybe even months. Everyone knows it matters, and the team is stretched thin. Sooner or later, someone says HR is slowing things down.
People nod, thinking the problem is solved, and the conversation moves on.
Except… HR already posted the job. Recruiters found candidates. Interviews took place. Feedback was gathered and shared. The process kept moving.
What hasn’t happened is a decision.
And that hesitation is where many hiring efforts actually break down.
Because in far more cases than leaders want to admit, HR isn’t the bottleneck. Indecision is.
We often refer to this pattern as decision latency—the growing gap between when leaders have enough information to decide and when they actually do.
What decision latency looks like in the real world
Decision latency isn’t about the team being too busy or distracted. It’s about the goal and the process being unclear.
It shows up as:
The role is “approved” but the success profile keeps shifting.
Too many interviewers and nobody owns the final call.
“Let’s see one more” (again).
The compensation conversation restarts every round.
Feedback that’s “vibes-heavy” and evidence-light
A team trying to avoid a mistake instead of trying to make a great hire.
Harvard Business Review (HBR) has pointed out this exact pattern: bloated processes, too many interviews, and consensus hiring that slows decisions. Their advice is simple: reduce interviews and give one hiring manager clear decision rights.
Candidates experience decision latency as a signal. And it’s not a good one.
Not “they’re being careful.”
More like: “They don’t know what they want.”
Today’s Hiring Environment Punishes Indecision
Plenty of companies say they want to move fast. Many have even flattened org structures to do it. But the tradeoff is real: more people involved, more coordination, and more opportunities for delay.
HBR captured this dynamic in a piece on less hierarchical companies, noting that every layer can introduce latency and risk aversion into information flow and decision-making.
Now add in the current hiring environment: candidates are tired, processes are longer, and tolerance for ambiguity is lower.
Inc. has been covering the “brutal slog” of job searching, including how slow processes and a lack of clarity frustrate candidates and damage hiring outcomes.
In this market, hesitation doesn’t feel thoughtful.
It feels like uncertainty.
The hidden costs leaders rarely measure
Most companies measure how long it takes to fill a job. Few consider the cost of not making a timely decision.
And there are two buckets of cost:
1) Business cost
Unfilled roles have a price tag:
Projects stall
Revenue is delayed
Customers feel the gap
The team absorbs the workload “temporarily,” until temporary becomes the culture
2) Talent cost
Slow decisions quietly push your best candidates out of the process.
Forbes has written about prolonged time-to-fill and how lengthy processes cause organizations to lose top talent to competitors who move faster. They also highlighted the relationship between longer assessments and higher candidate dropout rates.
The painful irony: the longer you wait “to be sure,” the more likely you are to end up choosing from whoever is still standing. That is not a strategy. That’s attrition.
“But we don’t want to make a bad hire”
We get it. We really do.
Most decision latency is born from a reasonable fear: What if we get it wrong?
HBR’s “Streamline the Hiring Process” article makes a point I wish more leaders would remember: companies create complicated processes because they’re afraid of mistakes, but sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
There’s also solid data that supports what we all feel anecdotally: indecision itself is a major blocker. Gartner found that slow, poor decision-making by hiring managers is a common issue, and leading organizations focus on assigning the right decision-maker, not just defaulting to consensus.
Speed does not mean recklessness.
But indecision does create risk:
You lose great people
You burn out your team
You damage your reputation with the market
You hire later under pressure, which is when “settling” becomes most tempting
What high-performing teams do differently
The best hiring teams aren’t special. They’re aligned.
Here’s what they do consistently:
They decide who owns the decision.
One person is responsible, and others give their input.
They define success before interviews start.
Not just responsibilities. Actual outcomes. What does “great” look like in six months? In a year?
They reduce interviews and increase quality.
Fewer meetings. Better prepared interviewers. Cleaner evaluation.
They use evidence, not impressions.
Work samples, structured scorecards, and specific examples beat “I just didn’t feel it.”
They move with urgency once they have enough.
They don’t wait for every detail, just enough information to make a good decision.
A practical “Decision Latency” checklist
If you’re a leader and you want to pressure-test whether you have a talent problem or a decision problem, ask these five questions:
Who is the decision maker?
If you can’t name them, you don’t have a process. You have a committee.What are the 3 non-negotiables?
If your list has 12 must-haves, you’re looking for a unicorn, not a real person.What would make us say yes?
If you can’t articulate this, you’ll keep interviewing forever.What are the “no” criteria?
It’s surprising how many teams can’t name their deal-breakers.What’s the deadline for the decision?
If there’s no date, there’s no urgency. If there’s no urgency, there’s no momentum.
Where we see the real work happen
At Ascentria, we do more than just find candidates.
It’s helping leadership teams get on the same page early, so they’re ready to choose when the right candidate comes along. That means:
Spotting misalignment before it causes delays.
Clarifying the role before it turns into three different roles.
Building a process that protects quality without suffocating momentum.
Because the market won’t wait while you try to be 100% certain.
Clarity Is the Competitive Advantage
Every hiring process sends a message, not just to candidates but also to your team.
When decisions drag on, people don’t assume leaders are being careful. They assume priorities are unclear, ownership is vague, and direction is still up for debate.
That uncertainty doesn’t stay contained to hiring. It spills into execution, morale, and trust.
If your hiring process feels stuck, don’t start by blaming HR. Start by examining where clarity breaks down and what success actually looks like.
In a market that rewards clarity, the ability to decide may be your greatest hiring advantage.