In short
In Australia an employee's resignation notice is set by their employment contract, award or enterprise agreement, not by the National Employment Standards. You cannot shorten it; only their current employer can agree to release them early. Ask about it in the first conversation, because it decides your start date more than anything you control.
Most hiring plans treat the accepted offer as the finish line. For the employer, the real finish line is the first day, and between the two sits a stretch of time the hiring manager has almost no control over. In our conversations it is one of the practical constraints that most often decides whether a candidate can start when you need them: notice periods, a bonus about to pay out, a relocation, sometimes a visa.
None of these is unusual, and all of them are knowable in the first week of a search. The mistake is finding out about them after the offer is signed.
Who sets the notice period
This is widely misunderstood. The National Employment Standards set the minimum notice an employer must give when it ends someone's employment. They do not set how much notice an employee must give when they resign. That comes from the employee's own contract, or from the award or enterprise agreement that covers them.
So a senior engineer's notice period is whatever their current contract says, and it varies. The Fair Work Ombudsman's guidance on resignation sets out how it works. For hiring purposes, three things follow:
- You cannot shorten it. It is an obligation between the candidate and their current employer. Only that employer can agree to release them early.
- It can be longer at senior levels. Senior and leadership contracts sometimes carry longer notice than a junior role would, so do not assume a figure; ask for it.
- You should ask on day one. "What is your notice period?" belongs in the first conversation, not the offer letter.
What else sits between yes and day one
- A bonus about to pay out. A candidate rarely walks away from a bonus due in a few weeks, and you would not either. Ask when it lands and plan the start date around it, or consider a signing amount that makes up for it.
- Garden leave. An employer may keep someone on full pay but away from work for the notice period, sometimes to stop them joining a competitor sooner. It can make the start date later than the notice period suggests.
- Payment in lieu. The opposite case: the employer pays out the notice and releases them immediately. Worth asking whether it is likely.
- Relocation and visas. Moving a family takes time, and if you are sponsoring, the visa adds more. We cover sponsorship and the time it adds separately.
An accepted offer is not a start date. The weeks in between belong to someone else's contract.
The notice period is when the counter-offer arrives
A resignation opens a window, and the current employer uses it. Most counter-offers are made during the notice period, when the candidate has resigned but not yet left, and a long notice period is simply a longer window for one to land.
You cannot prevent a counter-offer, and you should not try to talk a candidate out of considering one. What you can do is make sure the reasons they wanted to move were surfaced honestly before they resigned, so a counter has less to fix. Our counter-offer analysis sets out what a counter changes and what it does not, without telling the candidate what to decide.
Do not put a short fuse on the offer
A tight deadline on an offer feels like it speeds things up. It usually does the opposite. A candidate who has to decide in a day cannot resign properly, cannot discuss it at home, and is more likely to use your offer as leverage with their current employer than to accept it. Give a reasonable window, and use it to agree the start date in writing.
What the wait costs
Every week between the offer and the first day is a week the role is still, in practice, empty. For a senior software engineer in Sydney at the AUD 160-190k band, that is roughly AUD 11,018 a week on conservative assumptions about lost output and the time the team spends covering it. A four-week notice period and a delayed bonus can together add six or more weeks before any work is done.
That cost is the reason to ask early, not a reason to pressure the candidate. The cost of vacancy calculator lets you put your own assumptions in and see what a given start date is worth.
FAQ
Who decides how much notice an employee must give in Australia?
The employee's own employment contract, award or enterprise agreement. The National Employment Standards set the minimum notice an employer must give when ending someone's employment, not the notice an employee must give when resigning. The Fair Work Ombudsman publishes guidance on how resignation notice works.
Can a new employer shorten a candidate's notice period?
No. The notice period is an obligation between the candidate and their current employer, and only that employer can agree to release them early. A new employer can ask, and can plan around it, but cannot change it.
When should I ask a candidate about their notice period?
In the first conversation. Notice periods, bonuses about to pay out, relocation and visas decide the start date more than anything the hiring manager controls, and they are all knowable early. Finding out after the offer is signed is the most common cause of a start date slipping.
Why do counter-offers happen during the notice period?
Because a resignation gives the current employer a window to respond before the person leaves, and a longer notice period is a longer window. The best protection is making sure the candidate's reasons for moving were surfaced honestly before they resigned, so a counter-offer has less to fix.