Want to Hire Fast? Avoid These Hiring Time-Sucks 

Over the past couple of years, the talent market has seen its fair share of changes. From remote work to hybrid environments and from quiet quitting to quiet hiring, it’s safe to say that today’s job market looks very different than pre-pandemic times. Appropriately, as the job market has changed, so have the expectations of job seekers in the hiring process. Today’s candidates want information at their fingertips, demand answers to questions that may have been previously seen as taboo and require compensation and benefits details from the start.  

But there is one recent change in the hiring process that has become a priority for both recruiters and job seekers: time to hire. In a recent survey of professional recruiters, 29% ranked time to hire as their number one priority. Unsurprisingly, this is also a significant factor for job seekers, with 10% of surveyed job seekers stating that they did not accept a job offer due to a slow interview process. These survey results demonstrate the importance of time to hire in the competitive nature of today’s job market with 29% of job seeker respondents stating they rejected an offer because they received and accepted a different job offer.  

Improving time to hire may not only help your offer acceptance, but it can also reduce hiring costs and help your organization secure top talent by beating the competition. Companies that want to competitively bring in quality candidates in a timely manner will need to analyze their current hiring practices and strategically incorporate tactics to improve candidate experience and shorten time to hire.  

Here are common hiring process pitfalls that may be causing your organization to miss out on top talent.  

Undefined Hiring Process  

A common mistake of many hiring organizations is that they do not have a defined hiring process. This can mean that some hiring managers may have different candidate requirements, interview steps and hiring timelines than others. When this process is not defined, it can be unclear to internal employees who is responsible for certain steps. This lack of clarity can cause unnecessary time loss between screening, interview and onboarding steps and leave the candidate wondering what is next.  

A best practice is to have a clear, defined and documented hiring process. This should include a timeline with deadlines for the various steps and who is responsible for each step. Having a defined process will not only help get the hiring team on the same page, it will also help representatives provide a clear idea to the candidate about what to expect in the next steps of the hiring process. In the future, this will also enable the organization to be able to analyze and revise the process to improve hiring practices and streamline the process overtime.  

Long Interview Process  

The interview process is likely the longest section within most hiring processes. Oftentimes, organizations have an initial screening call that then leads into a series of virtual and in-person interviews with various members of the organization. Sometimes, these interviews (and the time between them) can span weeks and potentially months. While effective for being able to identify both best-fit and unqualified candidates, a long interview process can often cause a lag in the hiring process and leave candidates feeling uneasy and/or wanting to look elsewhere for a new opportunity.  

To streamline the interview process, organizations should identify and remove any unnecessary interview steps without compromising strategic vetting of candidates. This can be done by minimizing the number of interviews while increasing the duration of them, or, having multiple people interview the candidate in the same interview, instead of having separate interview appointments for each individual. Some other methods of reducing the length of the interview process include removing any indirect individuals from the hiring team and decreasing time between interviews if possible. Companies can also analyze historical data to identify other roadblocks in the interview process and survey current employees to inquire about any hiccups they may have experienced when they interviewed. By taking an intentional look at the interview process, employers will likely be able to find areas of improvement and make an impact on the hiring process as a whole.  

Avoiding the Preparation 

When a new role is ready to be opened at an organization, it can be tempting for recruiters to want to jump right into getting the job posted to review candidates as quick as possible. However, there is some pre-work that can be done that will prepare the team to hire more effectively and efficiently.  

When being notified of a new position, recruiters and hiring teams should first gather all necessary information to be able to put together an accurate and effective job description. This should include accurate position responsibilities, qualifications and a fair salary range. By agreeing on the salary range ahead of time, recruiters can eliminate anyone who may be seeking higher compensation and set the expectation early about what the job will pay. Additionally, by including an accurate description of the role, hiring teams can save time later on in the interviewing process by minimizing and surprises to the candidate about what the job entails. Overall, an efficient job description should overall encourage quality applies to the position, which in turn, should decrease sourcing time as well as unqualified candidate screens. Additionally, recruiters can prepare the interviewing team by scheduling time blocks in advance on manager’s calendars to minimize scheduling conflicts. By taking the time to get things organized and arranged ahead of time, teams should be able to improve overall time to hire. 

Hiring Process Redundancies  

Almost every hiring process has redundancies that can be streamlined and cleaned up. These can include everything from the beginning, such as a recruiter’s outreach to candidates and manually sourcing and screening applicants, to the end of the process where the applicant has to sign and complete paperwork. These time-consuming tasks can create redundancies for both the recruiter and the candidate, slowing down an organization’s time to hire.  

To streamline the process, organizations can leverage technologies such as chatbots for the screening stage and scheduling tools for each of the interview steps. Automation and Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can also be utilized for keeping recruiters organized and candidates engaged throughout the process. In the onboarding stage, HR teams can use automated signing software and online forms to make it simple for candidates to complete tasks. By making small improvements to the process over time, organizations can see improvements to their time to hire and ultimately to their bottom line.  

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