Everytime, I would rather have a potential hire be upfront and honest rather than 1. accept a position, 2. we stop looking, and 3. they drop out. That's just not professional. And as Joel says, by them telling us they have other options we're going to work on getting them interested in coming to work for us. I once lost a really great intern who was headhunted over a weekend, left me a voicemail on a Sunday morning to tell me he was being offered a position and took it on Monday first thing because I didn't get back to him immediately - I guess he was being pressured the same way as we had a great working relationship. It was really a shame as we didn't even get a chance to fight back for him.