How to Reduce the Time to Hire in Your Organization
Time to hire is one of the most important metrics talent managers, and recruiters use to measure the efficacy of their hiring efforts. Read further to learn more about how to hire candidates faster.
We all have heard the famous saying, “Time is money”, and for recruitment, this is true. Time to hire is one of the top key performance indicators for a recruitment team. A lengthy recruitment process hurts the candidate experience. Also, a delay of even one day can have a compounded effect on the bottom line in terms of higher financial costs. Thus, it is really important to adopt methods and tools that can shorten the time to hire. You’d be surprised to know that only 30% of companies can fill a role within 30 days. The remaining take anywhere between 1 to 4 months to make a hire. That leaves plenty of room for improvement.
These are the steps to decrease the Time-to-Hire
1. Build a Robust Talent Pipeline
A well-planned recruitment pipeline is many recruiters’ “secret sauce” for reducing the time it takes to source quality talent for open roles. Before a position even opens, you should be focused on building a pool of talent you could draw from in the event they are needed, even in case of urgent hiring.
Building a strong employer brand should be a point of focus as a part of the candidate engagement.
An Applicant Tracking System can help you in the hiring process, as it has specialized hiring channels/pipelines. Make sure you are tracking these people in an ATS so you can sort them by various criteria and refer back when needed.
2. Have a structured recruitment process to improve time to hire
While this might seem too obvious, but there are many small to medium enterprises that still do not have any documented hiring process in place.
Without a structured process, the recruiters have to spend longer time to fill as they end up starting from scratch for every hire. A process is not established until it’s on paper; therefore, recruiters must map out the entire recruitment journey including all possible steps and scenarios.
This is the only way one can understand the gaps and improve them. With everything documented, recruiters know exactly what to do and what not to, at every step, hence reducing redundant activities and improving the time to hire.
3. Adopt automation to reduce lead time in the recruitment process
Sourcing, screening, and interviewing candidates are all time-consuming workflows making the way for the use of automation. Even outreach emails are automated to immediately send an email when an application is received, the application is under review, or when you’d like to bring someone in for an interview.
Interviews can be conducted face-to-face, but it may be beneficial to do video interviews first before spending working hours bringing someone to the office.
With a comprehensive applicant tracking system, recruiters can simplify and streamline their recruitment flow, increase visibility, and cut their time to hire without losing on quality.
4. Improve your careers website to reduce recruitment cycle time
The careers web page is a significant source of candidate profiles for any organization. Any candidate who is interested in a position in a company will check their website and careers webpage.
If this website is not optimized for the best user experience, it surely is going to put the candidate’s mind in doubt.
The candidate may take longer to make his decision or may drop off completely. In both cases, recruiters will find it difficult to quickly source candidates for hiring, thereby lengthening the recruitment process.
5. Invest in a good Application Tracking System (ATS)
A good ATS will help at each point during your hiring process. From posting your job ad on multiple job boards to notifying you in real-time as people apply, an ATS can help you increase efficiency throughout large parts of your hiring process.
With interview scheduling, application streamlining and sorting, talent pipeline building, compliance-checking, and automation capabilities, an ATS is a core tool to structure your hiring process and reduce your average time to hire.
Do not rush while choosing an ATS but analyze your needs carefully and test out the tool before committing to it.
6. Connect your systems
There’s not one single solution that takes care of your complete hiring process. But if the different tools used are not integrated properly and don’t work well together, you’ll lose track of applications and candidates along the way.
To do so, create a hiring workflow and direct these different tools in use at each stage. In the end, the recruitment tech stack may just look a little something like this:
- A pre-employment testing solution
- An ATS
- An employee onboarding solution.
Alternatively, you can look for a solution that offers multiple functionalities. As long as everything’s connected and working together it will help you find the most suitable candidate as fast as possible.
7. Make interviewing quick
The delay in scheduling interviews directly adds to the time to hire. With most companies conducting at least 3 rounds of interviews, the time to schedule interviews usually offers a lot of room for improvement.
In addition to moving the candidates quickly between interviews, prepare yourself for those interviews. Robert Half, a recruiting influencer, suggests the following 5 ways to prepare for an interview:
- Review the job description
- Review the candidate’s work history
- Schedule it out
- Prepare key interview questions
- Meet in a comfortable setting
Interviews have to be quick and efficient to help you screen through the candidates faster and make your time to hire more speedy.
Wrapping it up
A short time-to-hire means that the recruiting initiatives are running well with minimal budget disruption while a protracted time-to-hire is one of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional organization. It improves employee morale as well as the candidate experience, boosting your employer brand and ensuring that you can fill roles swiftly and effectively with the best talent. Most importantly, when speeding up your time to hire, DON’T skips any step. Just be quick.
If you liked the blog please hit the 👏 button and share it with more people.
For more interesting blogs on Applicant Tracking System and current happenings in the HR, world follow us here and on LinkedIn!
