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Why speed matters
What does a candidate look for when they are considering a new position?
Are they asking themselves; “how do I join the no.1 company in my sector? “.
No, more likely they are saying “I am not happy with X or Y in my current role and I want to find a solution to this.”
So, the winner is the first employer who they believe has the solution to this issue and that they see as an overall step forward for their career. If they happen to get two or more offers at the same time then the question becomes “who has the best solution/overall offering?”.
Whilst you cannot always have the best solution or overall offering. You should try hard to be as appealing as you can. However, it is possible to have the slickest recruitment process that ensures your time to offer is faster than your competition.
If your offer meets the expectations of your prospective new hire, there is a very good chance they will accept it. Few candidates jump out of bed in the morning and say “Yes! I’ve got 2 more interviews today. The recruitment process is painful and often slow for candidates.
Why 2022 is the year for speed
Here at hireful we have almost 400 UK organisations using our Applicant Tracking System to streamline their recruitment. We track their performance and work with them to advise them on how they can recruit better. One of the metrics we track is speed of recruitment, meaning we’re able to report back on this to our customers so they can see how they’re doing.
Previously, we have seen some subtle changes but in 2022 the data is pretty eye opening.
Yes, it’s only 3 months’ worth of data but it paints a clear picture. Employers are responding to the competitive landscape and recruiting faster — more than twice as fast as they historically have. This means if you have not reviewed and streamlined your processes, then you are not maintaining the status quo, you are going backwards!
Fear not, streamlining your recruitment is not as hard as it first sounds, but you will need to get yourself and likely some of your colleagues out of your comfort zones. The “but this is how we have always done this” approach is not going to get the results you need.
7 steps to help you recruit faster:
1. Acknowledge that you have a problem
You cannot fight this fight on your own. What is the recruitment target? How vital is that to the business? How are you currently performing against it? Hopefully, you can convince your colleagues that the process needs changing.
2. Question every step
Recruitment can be a game of “marginal gains”. You and your colleagues need to be able to challenge each step in the process and ask “why do we do it like this, is there a better way?”.
3. Have a clear mandate
No more long lists of requirements. Your hiring manager should be able to tell you in 2-3 sentences who they need to hire.
4. Engage quickly
The first step in many recruitment processes is now a virtual zoom/teams interview. This is normally a pretty informal “chat” for both parties to understand each other better. This is actually super easy to setup with most ATS’ (including hireful’s) offering the option for the candidate to book themselves in at a convenient time for them.
5. Assess before hiring manager interview?
If the initial call has gone well and there is a good level of engagement, then your candidate should be motivated to move to the next step. Whilst you are trying to co-ordinate hiring managers together — why not build in an assessment phase before the hiring manager interview?
This will help make your recruitment process fairer and more inclusive, reducing the risk of unconscious bias. It will also help make the overall process more robust and should tell the candidate that you are a serious organisation who handles recruitment professionally.
It’s important the assessment process is a good fit for what you are assessing and is not too excessive. We like to build our own context specific assessments here at hireful when we are recruiting, we can then explain to the candidate why we are using it and how much time/effort it will take from them.
6. Be intentional
Many candidates fall into a recruitment process with no real knowledge or trust of when it will end. New steps keep emerging, new people to meet, steps to pass, on and on…
At the start of the process your recruiter should tell the candidate all about your process. The carrot dangling over the assessment process (which let’s face it no one likes), is that you will feedback to them within 24 hours and if they pass this phase then you will get them in front of the relevant hiring managers within a very short period of time.
As you are now representing a candidate you have engaged with and assessed; your hiring managers should be keen to meet them. As they are seeing less candidates now (thanks to the assessment) they should have more time free.
7. If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
If you like the candidate then you need to offer them. A slick process here shows the candidate you are professional and you are committed to them.
Anything else starts to breed distrust/concern.
hireful runs 100s of free webinars and workshops every year for in-house recruiters and HR professionals. For more information about our training events click the link below.
