Admin pile-up | Quarter of UK firms spending up to 10 hours a week just scheduling interviews

One in four (24%) of UK businesses spend up to 10 hours a week just scheduling interviews, according to new research from global matching and hiring platform Indeed.

According to ONS data, there are 934,000 job vacancies in the UK. Businesses are eager to fill these roles, but the findings from Indeed show that teams spend too much time on inefficient processes and mundane tasks. In fact, the survey of UK businesses found that employers say the second biggest challenge to hiring is the process being ‘time-consuming’, only behind talent shortages.

Businesses bogged down by administrative tasks

On average, employers spend a third (33%) of their hiring budget on administrative tasks. While hiring decision makers are spending the majority of time (6+ hours per week) on this type of work, including CV screening (56%), candidate assessment (55%) and candidate sourcing (55%).

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This trend is also evident on a wider business level. On average, employers spend 37% of their time on tasks associated with hiring activities, showing that these processes have become a major time drain.