Candidates don’t want to wait months for a decision -in fact, in an ideal situation, many would like to be evaluated and hired within the week. However, UK businesses take an average of four weeks to make a decision, with many of those taking much longer. Recent findings hint that the candidates will often accept their second and third choice if they’re lucky enough to have them, just because their first job option takes too long to decide.
Considering that many organizations are competing for top candidates, don’t you want to be a company that gives the candidate the quick decision they desire while at the same time hopefully de-risking your process further?
Possible Ways to Speed Up Your Recruitment Process:
- Gain Lead Time In Your Recruitment Process With a Talent Pipeline
If you want to reduce your hiring time, the single best thing you can do is create a talent pipeline well before you need it – even before you have an open role. It pays to be on the lookout – whether that means attracting active candidates to your company or strategically sourcing talent. Take the Shopify team. Because they doubled down on proactive sourcing, the company scaled at an extraordinary rate -from 550 to more than 2,000 workers in only three years.
Start attracting top-tier talent to your business with a strong employer brand and convert them through a recruiting life hack. In other words, have a form on your site where new hires can submit their contact information, social media profiles, and resume – without being attached to a specific role. By doing so, you don’t exclude great candidates that enter your site without seeing a position that immediately interests them.
The same works for proactive talent sourcing. When you encounter a top talent and don’t have an open role for them right away, add them to your applicant tracking system anyway.
- Decrease Time to Hire By Staying Aligned With Your HR Manager
When new job options open up, it’s important to get on the same page as your hiring manager to ensure that you’re sending them top talent from the start. Ask your HR manager to fill in a candidate sourcing intake form so you can be clear on what the perfect applicant looks like.
Program a kick-off meeting with your HR expert to source and review a few applicants together. This will help you get familiar with your sourcing process, better adjust candidates, and, lastly, reduce your time to screen. Additionally, you can use this meeting to debate any qualifications that are ambiguous, define the interview process, and discuss other key logistics. Excessive steps in your recruitment process, or a poorly defined role, can wreck and ruin your time to hire.
- Employ Advanced Tools to Manage Time to Hire
A time management tool like Online Timesheet Portal has always been the obvious way to cut down your time to hire. It does the majority of the legwork, utilizing your existing database rather than completing everything from scratch. Timesheet portal does an easy recording of time & expenses, approval of time on multiple devices on the move, and a straightforward process for you to generate invoices and pay runs, whether you’re working with limited companies or payroll workers. These tools simply automate the process you hate while also reducing time to hire.
- Online Behavioural Testing
This process allows applicants to perform simulated or real-life tasks they might be anticipated to do in the position, providing recruiters with a real insight into their skill level and predicted performance.
Believe it or not, behaviour offers at least three clear benefits:
- Because the internet allows candidates to undertake this testing online at home, you don’t need to invite them on-site for testing. This is a great time-saver.
- Applicants will often be much more comfortable in their chosen setting, so they can perform better.
- Again, online testing diminishes bias because their performance is exceptionally clear for all to see based on their online results.
- Deliver Great Experience to Minimize Turnout Time for Recruiting Process
Talented candidates are spoilt for choice when it comes to where they want to work and are likely to ignore your opportunity if you have a tedious application process. What’s to be done? Personally test the entire application process from job search to CV submission, to unearth ways to improve it for a great candidate experience. You may also be able to reduce your time to hire by keeping your applicants engaged throughout your recruitment process, starting with your application process.
The average time from the moment an applicant enters your pipeline to when they’re hired is 34 days. Make sure you keep them engaged during this time, so they don’t quit your recruitment process. That could mean treating them nicely during interviews, keeping in touch with them, and pre-closing them before submitting an offer. Stick to every step of your interview process and collect feedback quickly to avoid hanging your new hires. After the recruitment procedure, keep in touch with candidates to learn how you can optimize their experience.
Before you go…
Time to hire is an essential metric for companies that are losing productivity and revenue for every day a position remains open.
In general, an increase in time to hire over the past several years is normal – because of the shortage of skilled talent and the need for high-quality hires. Yet, there are things you can do to upscale your recruitment process and keep your time to hire in check. By constantly optimising and repeating your process, you won’t need to sacrifice quality for time.
