Users can prevent a pending job from being started with the hold  option the Slurm command scontrol.

Step-by-step guide

  1. In order to place a job on hold, type the command scontrol hold JOB_ID

  2. To release the job from the hold state, issue scontrol release JOB_ID

You can check the details of the command typing man scontrol on your shell.

Please note that a job on hold will not increase its priority while waiting in the Slurm queue: as a matter of fact, scontrol hold  sets its priority to 0.