Since Christmas has just passed and we’re now a few days before New Year’s, this is one of those times of the year when you can find yourself waiting around for longer than usual to get a response from someone who can influence your career.

Perhaps you’re waiting to see if you are getting an interview. Maybe you’re waiting for a second or third interview. Possibly it’s a job offer you’re expecting but you haven’t heard yet.

As a recruiter, you learn after awhile to pick up on time delays and you learn how to read between the lines even if a hiring manager you’re dealing with isn’t saying anything. If a hiring manager tells me for example that they liked a candidate of mine who they interviewed and expect that they’ll be back for a second interview, when a week passes and I’ve heard nothing from the hiring manager, you start figuring that something has happened (ie. they hired someone else) and that my candidate isn’t getting a second interview.

Typically it’s around that time that the hiring manager contacts me (often by email so they don’t have to tell me over the phone) to let me that they ended up hiring an internal candidate, or something like that.

As recruiters (and other sales-types will tell you) “time kills deals.” When a few days go by, it can kill any momentum you have and suddenly the deal that seemed so likely to occur isn’t so likely afterall.

If you’re a job searcher and aren’t necessarily dealing directly with the hiring manager, the waiting can be very nerve wracking and you start wondering what’s going on and why you haven’t gotten a response from the company yet.

At this time of year, the waiting can often be explained if the hiring manager or other decision maker is away for this week or has simply deferred hiring until the new year.

In some cases though, it’s because they’re off interviewing other people who the hiring manager suddenly decides are as desirable – if not more desirable – than you are. So now instead of being the one they were looking for, you’ve been reduced to one of the people they’re thinking about hiring.

Other times, it’s simply that you received information that wasn’t accurate or because you misinterpreted the cues you received. When I first started working as a recruiter, I recall that the first candidates I sent out for jobs ended up getting interviews and performed well. I got good feedback from the hiring company and I felt that the hiring manager led me to believe that one of these candidates was going to get a job offer. They were hiring two people so I thought my chances that at least one person was getting the job was very high.

I didn’t come right out and tell the candidates they were getting a job offer – I don’t do that unless the hiring manager has told me I should tell them this with 100% certainty – but in my mind I really thought it was going to happen and at least one of them was going to get the job.

It didn’t happen.

It turned out that the hiring manager liked these candidates but found two other people who he thought were better and were cheaper and he hired them instead.

Even my candidates were surprised they didn’t get an offer but perhaps the reason they were surprised is because they of course didn’t know anything about the two people who were hired so they had no basis for comparison. They simply felt that based on what the hiring manager had told them at the end of the interview process, that they each thought they were getting hired.

I had thought the same thing.

In hindsight, I should have known something was up because a week and a half had passed from the time my candidates had their last interview and the time that the hiring manager called me to let me know they’d hired other people. In hindsight, the delay should have been a warning to me but as I was new to the business, I think it was just wishful thinking on my part that nothing was wrong.

Sometimes, a delay in the job hiring process doesn’t mean anything and a delay occurs but then you get the job. Other times, a delay can mean that other things are going on behind the scenes that you don’t know about.

Either way, until you get something in writing that resembles a job offer, there are no guarantees and it’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket and hope that one particular job ends up coming through because often it doesn’t.