I told someone last week that they should walk away from a job.
Not because the role wasn’t right. Not because the money wasn’t compelling. It was a big job, global remit, significant compensation, the kind of opportunity that looks impressive on paper and even more impressive when you tell people about it.
I told them to walk because of how the hiring organisation had behaved throughout the process.
And in my view, that tells you everything you need to know.
Let’s start with some context. The average industry time-to-fill for executive roles is three to six months. That’s the industry benchmark. A reality of the complexity involved in senior leadership hiring. However, there’s a difference between a process that takes time and a process that wastes it. Executive roles without specialist support often have the longest hiring times, sometimes exceeding 120 days, due to a limited pool of qualified candidates and the extended evaluation process required before making a high-stakes senior hire. That makes sense. The stakes are high. The evaluation should be rigorous.
What doesn’t make sense is a five-stage interview process taking almost four months, with the final interview sitting unanswered for over a month. What doesn’t make sense is moving the goalposts on remit after all of that time, and then expressing frustration when the individual in process dares to ask questions about what has effectively become a different role to the one they applied for.
That’s just plain and simple dysfunction.
The way you hire is the way you operate. This is what many organisations still don’t realise about themselves. The interview process is arguably the clearest signal an individual ever gets of an organisation’s culture, decision-making speed, and respect for people. When you’re at your best, motivated, structured, and trying to impress someone, this is what you look like. Imagine what you look like when you’re not.
A US-based Candidate Experience Report shows that 57% of job seekers rejected offers due to poor communication, negative interview experience, or unclear expectations during lengthy processes. Not because of the offer that’s on the table, but because of how it got there. They’re qualified professionals whom the hiring companies want, but they’ve lost patience with companies that couldn’t make decisions.
Research shows that companies making employment offers within 48 hours of a final interview are 50% more likely to have those offers accepted. Speed signals respect. And respect, at this level, is non-negotiable.
I want to be honest about the current market. According to the Data & AI Leadership Exchange’s 2025 survey, 98.4% of organisations are increasing their investment in data and AI, up dramatically from 82.2% just a year ago. Demand for leadership in this space has never been higher. And yet, paradoxically, the market for senior Data and AI executives is tougher to navigate than the headline figures suggest. I wrote about this last week in greater depth.
More than half of CDOs serve less than three years in the role, and 24.1% last for less than two years. That kind of churn happens when mandates aren’t properly defined, when resources don’t match ambition, and when organisations have a title in mind rather than a genuine strategy.
The individual I spoke to last week was at risk of walking into exactly that situation. The remit was being downgraded before they’d even started. The process had already demonstrated that the organisation struggled to make and stick to decisions. What would month six look like? What would year two look like?
These are the questions every senior Data and AI leader should be asking, and the interview process is often where you find the answers.
I’ve heard it before, and I’m sure I’ll hear it again: “It takes time in a big organisation. There are a lot of stakeholders.”
Fair. But the research suggests nearly 40% of senior-level roles already take more than 90 days to fill, and the national average time-to-hire has nearly doubled in three years, moving from 36 to 44 days in 2023 to over 63 days by 2026. We are already in an environment of extended timelines. The question isn’t whether executive hiring is complex. It’s whether that complexity is being managed with any respect for the people on the other side of it.
Reducing time in the interview stage by just five days can improve candidate Net Promoter Score by 20%. This doesn’t mean you need to reinvent your process and start from scratch. You just need to be intentional, communicative, and honest. That’s literally it. Being a large organisation means you have more resources to get this right, not a standing excuse to get it wrong.
I speak to Data and AI leaders every week. I know the market is difficult right now for certain roles. I know the pressure to land the next position, to keep momentum, to accept the uncertainty because the alternative feels worse. But I want to say something plainly: your self-respect is worth more than any job offer.
If an organisation can’t manage a hiring process with basic clarity and courtesy, it cannot manage you once you’re inside. If they move the goalposts during the courtship, they will move them again once you’re accountable for outcomes. If they get frustrated when you ask reasonable questions, they will get frustrated when you push back in the boardroom.
The interview process is a preview. Believe what you’re shown.
At Orbition, we are also prepared to walk away. We won’t work with organisations that treat individuals this way, because we know what it does to people’s careers, confidence, and wellbeing when they join organisations that confuse process drag with rigour. It’s also why our time to hire is dramatically lower than the industry average; our last two senior hires took 30-40 days. We help organisations perform better than the majority of the market.
The best organisations in this space move with purpose. They communicate clearly. They define the role before they advertise it. They respect the time of the senior executives they’re trying to attract. And when they find the right person, they act.
Everything else is noise. And some noise is worth walking away from.
Kyle
