Why Candidates Are Saying No

Offer Acceptance Benchmarks in Canada (2026)

What your offer acceptance rate is actually telling you — by sector, seniority, and the process factors that separate high-closing organizations from everyone else.

A NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: Throughout this article, ‘Offer Acceptance Rate’ (OAR) refers to the percentage of formal written offers extended to candidates that result in signed acceptance — calculated as: accepted offers ÷ offers extended × 100. Verbal acceptances are excluded. Decline reasons are drawn from candidate exit surveys, recruiter-reported data, and published global research calibrated to Canadian market conditions. Where Canadian-specific data is not available, global benchmarks are noted as such and adjusted for known structural differences in the Canadian labour market, including notice period norms, bilingual requirements, and provincial mobility constraints. All figures reflect 2025–2026 market conditions.

 

You sourced the candidate. The hiring manager was excited. Three rounds of interviews, two internal alignment calls, and a reference check later — you sent the offer. And they said no.

This scenario is playing out with increasing frequency across Canadian organizations in 2026. Not because talent has become scarcer — unemployment sits at 6.7% nationally, and there are 3.3 job seekers for every vacancy. The market has fundamentally shifted in employers’ favour relative to 2022. Yet offer decline rates in competitive professional roles remain stubbornly high, and in technology, engineering, and financial services, they are trending worse.

The reason is not primarily the labour market. It is process. Canadian employers are losing candidates at the offer stage not because they lack competitive compensation — though that is a factor — but because elongated timelines, internal approval delays, compensation surprises, and inconsistent candidate experiences are eroding interest that was strong enough to carry through four or five rounds of interviews. The candidate who declines your offer almost always wanted the job at some point in the process. Something changed.

This guide provides offer acceptance rate benchmarks by industry and seniority level, calibrated for Canadian market conditions, and a structured analysis of the reasons candidates say no — and what the evidence suggests organizations can do about it.

SECTION 1 — THE CANADIAN CONTEXT IN 2026

The Paradox of the 2026 Canadian Hiring Market

Canada’s current labour market presents talent acquisition leaders with an unusual challenge: elevated unemployment alongside persistent hiring difficulty. Robert Half Canada’s 2026 Demand for Skilled Talent research found that 53% of Canadian hiring managers report finding skilled professionals more challenging to hire than a year ago — despite a national unemployment rate of 6.7% and 3.3 job seekers per vacancy.

The resolution to this paradox lies in the composition of the unemployed population. The candidates most organizations are competing for — specialized technology professionals, bilingual senior managers, credentialed engineers and clinicians — are not well-represented in the unemployed pool. They are employed, passively available, and evaluating opportunities with considerably more care than they did during the frantic hiring pace of 2021–2022.

The shift from a candidate-driven to an employer-driven labour market has not produced the improvement in offer acceptance rates many talent leaders expected. Candidates are more selective, not less — because they are more informed, have more access to salary transparency tools, and are less willing to leave stable employment for an uncertain fit.

This context shapes how offer acceptance rates should be interpreted in Canada. A rate that might signal market competitiveness in one sector can signal process failure in another. And the factors driving declines have evolved: compensation remains the primary driver, but process experience, flexibility expectations, and counter-offer dynamics have become structurally significant in ways they were not three years ago.

Why Canadian OARs Differ From Global Benchmarks

Published global offer acceptance benchmarks — typically citing 80–85% as the average — require meaningful adjustment for the Canadian context. Several structural factors push Canadian OARs both above and below global norms depending on sector:

• Notice period culture. Canadian employment contracts routinely require two to four weeks’ notice for professional roles, with executive contracts frequently specifying 30–90 days. This extends the window between offer acceptance and start date — creating sustained exposure to counter-offers from current employers and alternative offers from competitors who have since caught up in their own processes.
• Bilingual requirement premium. Roles requiring French-English fluency operate in materially smaller candidate pools. Bilingual candidates with genuine professional fluency carry more comparative leverage — and are more likely to field multiple simultaneous opportunities. OARs for bilingual mandated roles routinely run 5–8 percentage points below equivalent unilingual roles.
• US employer competition in tech hubs. In Vancouver, Toronto, and Waterloo, Canadian technology employers compete for AI/ML engineers, cybersecurity professionals, and senior architects with US firms offering USD-denominated salaries and remote-first arrangements. For these candidates, the effective comparison set is continental.
• Limited pay transparency legislation. Canada does not yet have federal pay transparency requirements equivalent to those now in force in California, Colorado, New York, and Washington. Candidates in competitive fields benchmark independently against Glassdoor Canada, LinkedIn Salary, and Indeed Canada — and often arrive at offer stage with a different compensation figure in mind than the organization planned to extend.

SECTION 2 — OFFER ACCEPTANCE RATE BENCHMARKS BY INDUSTRY

Where Your Rate Should Sit — By Sector and Seniority

The table below provides offer acceptance rate benchmarks by industry and seniority level, calibrated for Canadian market conditions. These ranges represent typical performance for organizations with reasonably competitive compensation and functional hiring processes. Rates at the low end of each range indicate emerging process or compensation issues; rates consistently below the range signal structural problems worth diagnosing.

 

Industry / Sector	Entry-Level OAR	Mid-Level OAR	Senior / Exec OAR	Key Canadian Dynamics
Construction & Skilled Trades	88–93%	85–91%	80–87%	Candidates receive fewer competing offers; decisive when a good match is found. Top tradespeople move fast — delay past 72 hours and the window closes.
Manufacturing & Distribution	88–92%	84–90%	79–85%	Strong acceptance at entry level. Mid-level automation roles face more comparison shopping as AI-adjacent skills become more valued.
Retail & Consumer	85–91%	78–85%	72–80%	High OAR for hourly; management-level candidates in corporate retail increasingly demanding remote flexibility unavailable in sector.
Healthcare & Social Assistance	82–90%	78–86%	74–82%	Long searches self-select highly motivated candidates. Clinical specialist roles hold strong acceptance despite process length. Administrative roles more vulnerable to counter-offers.
Business & Professional Services	79–87%	74–83%	68–78%	Quebec bilingual roles see lower OAR due to smaller candidate pools accepting mismatched offers less readily. Boutique consulting roles face comparison with national firm offers.
Financial Services & Insurance	78–86%	73–82%	65–76%	Senior candidates in banking and asset management frequently field multiple simultaneous offers. Total compensation structure — bonus, deferred comp — adds negotiation complexity.
Engineering	77–85%	72–81%	64–74%	P.Eng. designation holders in infrastructure and energy are in short supply; they negotiate from strength. International candidates accepting relocation offers show higher decline rates.
Life Sciences & Pharmaceutical	76–84%	70–79%	63–73%	GLP/GMP-qualified candidates have significant cross-sector leverage. Quebec pharma roles require bilingual fluency, reducing pool and increasing counter-offer risk.
Information Technology	74–83%	68–78%	60–72%	Lowest OAR of any sector. AI/ML and cybersecurity candidates routinely hold 2–3 simultaneous offers. Offer-to-start windows extend significantly due to notice periods and competing timelines.
Public Sector & Government	82–90%	80–88%	78–86%	Highest OAR at senior levels of any sector — candidates self-select for stability, pension, and defined benefits. Once an offer is made, acceptance is near-certain at executive levels.

Sources: Employ Inc. 2026 Hiring Benchmarks Report | Ashby Talent Trends Report (54M applications, Jan 2021–Mar 2026) | SmartRecruiters Global Recruitment Benchmarks 2025 | Gartner HR Survey (candidate multi-offer data) | TreeGarden Offer Acceptance Rate Analysis 2026 | Robert Half Canada Demand for Skilled Talent 2026 | Groom & Associés search practice data. Ranges reflect Canadian market conditions; global benchmarks adjusted for Canadian structural factors. Individual organizational rates will vary based on employer brand, compensation positioning, and process design.

Reading the Table: What Your Rate Is Telling You

A sustained OAR above 90% in any professional segment warrants scrutiny as much as a low rate. It may indicate that your screening criteria are so tight — or your offer stage so selective — that you are only extending offers when acceptance is nearly certain. This can mask a longer and costlier path to hire. The question is not only ‘what percentage of our offers are accepted’ but ‘how many qualified candidates did we engage before getting to that offer, and how long did the process take.’

Rates between 70–80% signal room for improvement without indicating structural failure. In most cases, a targeted review of offer timing, compensation benchmarking, and candidate experience across the final two interview stages will identify the primary driver.

A sustained rate below 70% in any segment is a signal that something structural is broken — compensation positioning, process length, candidate experience, or some combination. At this level, declined offers are no longer an anomaly; they are a pattern with identifiable causes.

The Time-to-Offer Factor

One of the most actionable findings in current offer acceptance research: candidates who intend to accept an offer do so in approximately two days of receiving it. Candidates who decline take closer to six days (Ashby, analysis of 230,000 offer-stage applications). This is not coincidence — it reflects that candidates who are genuinely committed make a fast decision, while those who are uncertain or evaluating alternatives delay.

The implication for talent acquisition teams is direct: if your average offer-to-decision window exceeds three to four days, you are likely losing a meaningful share of candidates who were genuinely interested when the offer was extended but were overtaken by alternative offers, counter-offers, or second thoughts during the delay.

The most effective response is not to pressure candidates for faster decisions — it is to shorten the gap between the hiring team’s decision and the candidate receiving the written offer. Many organizations take five to ten business days to move from ‘we want to hire this person’ to ‘the offer is in their inbox,’ due to sequential internal approvals, compensation committee reviews, and HR paperwork queues. That window is where offers are lost.

SECTION 3 — WHY CANDIDATES SAY NO

 

The Eight Reasons Offers Are Declined — and What to Do About Each

Declined offers are rarely random. They cluster around eight identifiable drivers, each with a distinct diagnostic signature and a specific set of organizational responses that the evidence supports. The table below maps each reason to its estimated frequency, what is actually happening from the candidate’s perspective, and what high-performing Canadian employers do differently.

 

Decline Reason	Est. Frequency	What’s Actually Happening	What High-Performing Employers Do
Compensation below market	~53%	Candidates now benchmark in real time against Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary, and Indeed Canada before the offer arrives. Offers perceived as 10%+ below market are almost never accepted without negotiation.	Benchmark against current market data before posting. Never extend an offer you haven’t already validated against 2026 salary surveys. Pay transparency in postings reduces late-stage surprise.
Competing offer accepted	~44%	44% of candidates are fielding multiple offers simultaneously (Gartner). In tech, cybersecurity, and engineering, this figure is significantly higher. Offer timing — not offer quality — often determines the outcome.	Close the gap between verbal offer and written offer to under 24 hours. Pre-qualify interest before starting the offer approval process. Ask directly: ‘Are you in process with other organizations?’
Process took too long	~38%	62% of candidates have withdrawn from a process they found too slow (LinkedIn Talent Trends). In Canada, elongated multi-stakeholder approvals and sequential interview rounds are the most common culprits. Each week of delay increases counter-offer exposure.	Set and communicate timelines upfront. Pre-approve offers internally before final interviews. Eliminate sequential approval chains that add 5–10 business days after decision.
Lack of remote/hybrid clarity	~35%	Candidates are not opposed to office work — they are opposed to uncertainty about it. Vague language about ‘flexible arrangements’ that resolves to full-time on-site at offer stage is a leading source of late-stage withdrawals in 2025–2026.	State the specific hybrid model (e.g., ‘three days in office, Tuesday–Thursday’) at first interview. Do not position flexibility as a post-start negotiation.
Role not as described	~30%	Candidates who discover a significant gap between the posted role and the actual responsibilities at offer or onboarding stage withdraw at high rates. This is increasingly common as job descriptions are written by committee or copied from outdated postings.	Audit job descriptions before posting. Have the direct hiring manager validate scope and responsibilities before the role goes live. Consistency across all interviewer conversations is essential.
Counter-offer accepted	~25%	Half of all resigning candidates receive a counter-offer from their current employer (industry consensus). In Canada’s notice-period culture, the gap between verbal acceptance and resignation creates a window for counter-offers to land.	Build counter-offer preparation into your pre-close conversations. Ask candidates to anticipate the counter-offer scenario before they resign. Maintain engagement through the notice period.
Culture / leadership concerns	~20%	76% of candidates research a company’s culture and values before applying (MRINetwork). Inconsistency between what interviewers represent and what Glassdoor reviews or LinkedIn connections report creates confidence gaps that crystallize at offer stage.	Glassdoor management responses, consistent messaging across interviewers, and authentic culture conversations early in process all reduce late-stage cultural doubt.
Career growth uncertainty	~18%	Candidates prioritizing long-term trajectory over immediate compensation — particularly core-aged (25–54) professionals — cite unclear advancement pathways as a reason for declining roles that are otherwise well-compensated.	Share concrete career path examples from within the organization. Specify what ‘success at 12 months’ looks like and what it typically leads to. Career growth conversations belong in first interviews, not onboarding.

Sources: Gartner HR Survey (multi-offer and compensation data) | LinkedIn Global Talent Trends 2024 (process timeline data) | Employ Inc. / Jobvite 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report (decline reason distribution) | MRINetwork 2026 Hiring Outcomes Report | CareerPlug candidate experience research | Ashby Talent Trends Report | Groom & Associés practitioner data. Frequency estimates are approximations based on reported research ranges; individual organizational data will vary by sector, seniority, and candidate source.

The Counter-Offer Problem in the Canadian Context

Counter-offers deserve specific attention in the Canadian market because notice period culture creates a structural vulnerability that US-benchmarked research does not fully capture. When a candidate accepts your offer and then resigns from their current employer, two to four weeks of direct counter-offer exposure follows — during which their current manager, HR team, and often senior leadership have both the motivation and the time to construct a compelling retention package.

The statistics on counter-offer outcomes are consistently sobering. Fifty percent of candidates who accept a counter-offer from their current employer are actively searching again within 60 days. Eighty percent leave within six months. Nine in ten leave within twelve months. The counter-offer addresses compensation — rarely the underlying reasons the candidate chose to leave. But that does not prevent it from working in the short term, at the direct cost of organizations that had invested weeks in a search process.

High-performing talent acquisition teams address this by making the counter-offer conversation part of the pre-close process — explicitly asking candidates before they resign: ‘When you give your notice, your current employer may come back with an offer to stay. Have you thought about how you would handle that?’ Candidates who have processed this scenario in advance are significantly less likely to be surprised by it, and significantly more likely to maintain their commitment to your offer.

SECTION 4 — CANADIAN-SPECIFIC FACTORS

 

What Makes Canada Different: Five Structural Factors

Global offer acceptance research provides a useful baseline. But five structural factors in the Canadian market shape OAR dynamics in ways that require specific organizational responses, distinct from what US-benchmarked best practices would suggest.

 

Canadian-Specific Factor	How It Affects Offer Acceptance	How High-Performing Employers Manage It
Notice period culture	Canadian employment contracts routinely require two to four weeks’ notice for professional roles; executive contracts often specify 30–90 days. The gap between offer acceptance and start date creates a sustained window for counter-offers to land — and for candidates to have second thoughts.	Anticipate counter-offer exposure during the full notice period. Maintain recruiter or hiring manager contact with the candidate through their notice. Brief the new hire on what to expect from their current employer.
Bilingual role requirements	Roles requiring French-English fluency — whether mandated by Bill 96 in Quebec or by national mandate for federal or crown corporation roles — operate in materially smaller talent pools. Candidates with genuine bilingual capability have stronger comparative leverage than their unilingual counterparts.	Price bilingual roles at a premium reflecting market scarcity, not at standard band equivalents. Reduce process length for bilingual roles specifically — the pool is narrower and candidates move faster.
Salary transparency gap vs. US	Canada does not yet have federal pay transparency legislation equivalent to the requirements now in force in California, Colorado, New York, and Washington. Several provinces (BC, PEI) have introduced or are considering legislation. Where ranges are not disclosed, candidates in competitive fields default to market research tools — and often arrive at offer stage with a different number in mind.	Proactively disclose compensation ranges in postings. Organizations that do this report faster time-to-offer and lower late-stage decline rates, as candidates self-select earlier on compensation fit.
US employer competition in tech hubs	In Vancouver, Toronto, and Waterloo, Canadian technology employers compete directly with US firms offering USD-denominated salaries and remote-friendly arrangements. For senior software engineers, AI/ML specialists, and cybersecurity professionals, the effective comparison set is continental, not national.	For specialized tech roles, benchmark against US remote-eligible market rates, not Canadian averages. Total compensation framing — including healthcare value (meaningfully higher for US employees), RSUs, and tax differentials — can partially offset the nominal salary gap.
Provincial mobility friction	Canada’s credential recognition framework for regulated professions (engineers, nurses, accountants, lawyers) varies by province. A P.Eng. licensed in Alberta is not automatically licensed in Ontario. This creates friction for candidates considering interprovincial relocation — and a hidden source of offer declines when candidates discover the timeline post-offer.	Clarify provincial licensing requirements and timelines before extending offers to candidates relocating from other provinces. Where possible, offer bridge support (temporary licensing, timeline flexibility) to reduce post-offer withdrawal.

Sources: Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey March 2026 | Robert Half Canada Demand for Skilled Talent 2026 | Indeed Hiring Lab Canada 2026 Jobs & Hiring Trends Report | Engineers Canada — National Membership Data | Groom & Associés practitioner analysis of Canadian search market dynamics.

SECTION 5 — WHAT HIGH-PERFORMING EMPLOYERS DO DIFFERENTLY

 

The Process Practices That Move the Number

Offer acceptance rates are not primarily a compensation problem — though compensation is the leading stated reason for declines. They are fundamentally a process and candidate experience problem. Organizations with consistently high OARs share a set of practices that are less about what they offer and more about how they get to the offer.

1. The Pre-Close Conversation

High-closing organizations do not extend formal offers into a void. Before the written offer is prepared, a designated recruiter or hiring manager conducts a verbal alignment conversation with the finalist candidate. This conversation covers: the expected compensation range and whether it aligns with the candidate’s expectations; whether the candidate has other active processes; what timeline the candidate needs to make a decision; and — explicitly — whether anything has changed since the interviews that might affect their interest in the role.

This conversation is not a negotiation. It is a diagnostic. Organizations that conduct it consistently report significantly lower rates of formal offer declines, because misalignments are identified and addressed — or the offer is held — before the formal process is triggered.

2. Offer Delivery Speed as a KPI

The gap between internal hiring decision and candidate receipt of written offer is one of the highest-leverage and most overlooked metrics in talent acquisition. In organizations with sequential approval chains, this gap frequently runs five to ten business days — a window during which competing offers arrive, counter-offers are extended, and candidate enthusiasm erodes.

Leading organizations pre-approve compensation ranges before final interviews begin, not after. This single change — moving compensation committee review upstream — eliminates most of the post-decision delay. The target: written offer in the candidate’s inbox within 24 hours of the verbal decision.

3. Consistent Compensation Benchmarking

The most common source of offer declines in professional roles is a compensation gap the employer did not know existed. Salary benchmarks from 2023 or 2024 surveys are materially below current market rates in technology, engineering, and financial services. Organizations that benchmark annually against current data — specifically Robert Half Canada’s Salary Guide, Mercer’s Canadian compensation surveys, and Statistics Canada’s Job Vacancy and Wage Survey — consistently extend offers that align with candidate expectations rather than requiring post-decline renegotiation.

4. Flexibility Stated, Not Implied

The single most actionable change many Canadian organizations can make to their offer acceptance rates costs nothing: state the hybrid work arrangement explicitly and early. Not ‘we support flexible work’ — but ‘this role is three days in office (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) with two days remote.’ Candidates who receive this information in the first interview and proceed through the process have already self-selected on this dimension. Candidates who receive ambiguous flexibility signals and then discover the reality at offer stage withdraw at high rates.

5. The Silver Medalist Pipeline

Organizations with consistently strong OARs maintain a documented pipeline of candidates who reached late stages in prior searches but were not selected — or who declined offers in favour of other roles. When a new mandate opens in a comparable function, this pipeline is activated before external sourcing begins. These candidates are already familiar with the organization, have a positive process experience on record, and typically convert at significantly higher rates than cold-sourced candidates.

The most expensive offer decline is not the one that requires you to restart a search. It is the one that costs you a candidate who wanted to work for you — and left because your process took three weeks longer than your competitor’s.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

 

Q: What is a good offer acceptance rate for a Canadian employer?

The appropriate benchmark varies significantly by sector and seniority. For entry-level and trades roles, OARs of 85–93% are achievable and represent strong performance. For mid-level professional roles across most industries, 78–88% is the realistic high-performing range. For senior and specialized roles — particularly in technology, financial services, and bilingual mandates — rates of 65–80% reflect the structural realities of a competitive candidate market, and organizations consistently above 85% at this level should examine whether their screening criteria are artificially limiting the offer pool. A sustained rate below 70% in any professional segment warrants diagnostic attention.

Q: How should we track and report offer acceptance rate internally?

Offer acceptance rate is most meaningful when segmented by business unit, function, seniority band, and sourcing channel — not reported as a single organizational aggregate. An overall OAR of 82% may mask a technology division running at 65% and a corporate services function at 91%. Report OAR alongside time-to-offer (days from hiring decision to written offer delivery), decline reason distribution (standardized categories captured at the point of decline), and offer-to-start conversion (tracking withdrawals between signed offer and first day). Together, these four metrics provide a complete picture of offer-stage health.

Q: How do we handle a candidate who declines due to compensation after a lengthy process?

A post-decline compensation negotiation is rarely successful and rarely worth pursuing, for two reasons. First, a candidate who has declined an offer has typically already made or received a commitment elsewhere — the negotiation reopens something that is functionally closed. Second, even when successful, a candidate who had to decline before receiving a competitive offer often carries residual skepticism about the organization’s valuing of their work. The more productive investment is upstream: ensure compensation ranges are validated against current market data before the search opens, disclosed or referenced in early conversations, and confirmed at the pre-close stage before a formal offer is extended.

Q: Should we make counter-offers to candidates who decline?

Counter-offers are occasionally appropriate when a candidate’s stated reason for declining is addressable — a specific flexibility arrangement, a title adjustment, a start date accommodation — and when the underlying interest in the role is confirmed. They are rarely appropriate when the decline reason is compensation, because a compensatory counter-offer signals that the original offer was not the organization’s best, which creates a trust problem for the relationship going forward. And they are almost never appropriate when the candidate has already accepted another offer — counter-offering into a signed acceptance creates legal and reputational risk.

Q: How does offer acceptance rate relate to quality of hire?

There is a meaningful and sometimes overlooked relationship between OAR and quality of hire. Organizations that push acceptance rates artificially high — by extending offers only when they are nearly certain of acceptance — often achieve this by narrowing their candidate pool so aggressively that they miss strong candidates who required more selling. Separately, the candidate experience during the offer stage is one of the strongest predictors of early engagement: new hires who felt the offer process was disorganized, slow, or inconsistent with the organization’s stated culture are more likely to leave within the first year. Offer stage experience is effectively the first onboarding interaction.

Sources & References

1. Employ Inc. — 2026 Hiring Benchmarks: Does Your Recruiting Stack Up? employinc.com (January 2026)
2. Ashby — Talent Trends Report: Offer Acceptance Rates (analysis of 54M applications, Jan 2021–Mar 2026). ashbyhq.com
3. SmartRecruiters — Global Recruitment Benchmarks 2025 (via StaffingHub). smartrecruiters.com / staffinghub.com
4. Gartner — HR Survey: Candidate Multi-Offer Data and Compensation Decision Drivers. gartner.com
5. LinkedIn — Global Talent Trends 2024: Candidate Process Expectations. linkedin.com/business/talent
6. Jobvite / Employ Inc. — 2025 Job Seeker Nation Report: Offer Decline Reason Distribution. employ.com
7. MRINetwork — Why Candidates Reject Offers: The Hidden Factors Impacting 2026 Hiring Outcomes. mrinetwork.com
8. Robert Half Canada — Demand for Skilled Talent 2026 Report; March 2026 Labour Force Survey Update. roberthalf.com/ca
9. Statistics Canada — Labour Force Survey, March 2026 (The Daily, April 10, 2026). statcan.gc.ca
10. Statistics Canada — Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, Q4 2025 (The Daily, March 17, 2026). statcan.gc.ca
11. Indeed Hiring Lab Canada — 2026 Jobs & Hiring Trends Report. hiringlab.org/en-ca
12. TreeGarden — Offer Acceptance Rate Benchmark: What’s Normal, What’s Not? treegarden.io (March 2026)
13. CareerXchange — What Employers Can Learn From Declined Offers. careerxchange.com (March 2026)
14. Manatal — Offer Acceptance Rate Explained: Fix Declines & Close More Hires. manatal.com (January 2026)
15. Stanton House / LinkedIn — Counter-Offer Statistics: What the Data Shows. stantonhouse.com
16. Groom & Associés — Practitioner analysis of offer-stage dynamics in Canadian professional and executive search, 2024–2026.

All benchmarks reflect best available data as of Q1 2026. Offer acceptance rates vary by organization, employer brand, candidate source, and market conditions. Ranges in this report represent typical performance for organizations with competitive compensation and functional hiring processes. Individual results will vary. This guide is updated annually.