In today’s competitive job market, switching jobs have become very common. And the reason behind this is employees have become multifaceted due to the heavy workforce in their organization.
Hence, the ratio of switching jobs has become more compared to previous times. Losing a talented employee has become common nowadays as they feel the need for talented has increased.
Organizations have understood the reality, and hence recruitment and selection process of the new candidate is like a day to day happenings. They are been forced to speed up the hiring process timeline.
How Important Hiring Procedure is for an Organization:
Hiring or the recruitment process is a process of filling the vacancy left for the business requirement. An organization needs to fill up the vacancy as quickly as possible because when the demand increases it will become tough to get the right person.
Nowadays, job seekers have come to state that they have two or more opportunities in hand and then they select one from them. The recruiter needs to get it done quickly and speed up the hiring process.
How to Speed Up Hiring Process Timeline?
Longer hiring process turns out to be a drag for both the employee and the employer. Taking too long time in the recruitment process is not at all good, that doesn’t mean you need to do it in rush.
As per the State of the Recruiting Industry report, most of the job seekers tend to reject the job offer because the employers took too long to make an offer.
Though if the candidates applied are many, then filtering them in the initial stages would take time but later on, the hiring process should not be prolonged. It can harm the employer as well as the employee in a negative way.
Tips for Shortening the Hiring Process Timeline:
- Choose the candidates to be interviewed carefully
- Cut downtime taking recruitment stages
- Make use of technology
- Do not use too many software programs
- Do not wait till the end for checking references
- Take decisions smartly and quickly
Tips to Speed up the Hiring Process:
The following mentioned are few tips to speed up the recruitment process steps or hiring process. They are,
1. Make it visible internal:
The first step would be making it visible internally. It is the human resource department’s job to post it in the company’s career section to make it visible internally. By this method, the employers might come to know whether the existing employees are ready to shift internally and also they might refer to some valuable candidates who require the job. In this way, the whole process of hiring might speed up and benefit the organization.
2. Describing the vacancy appropriately:
This might seem very basic, but there have been many situations where the candidate does not understand the exact job skills required for the post put up by the recruiter.
Sometimes the keywords posted by the recruiter might not match the candidate’s expectation. So, make a note to describe the job post appropriately with the right key skills with appropriate keywords required for the job.
3. Be choosy in the choice:
Be selective in choosing the candidates while shortlisting as it makes the process easier and speeds up the process too. We might feel to keep many options for a safer perspective, but this might only increase the decision making time and more effort will be needed to make a choice.
Hence, never try to increase the count for the later choice as it might lead to more complications in terms of selection and create confusion at the end.
4. Be clear about the need for a requirement in business:
Once you have decided to recruit a candidate, make sure to get the exact need from the business side. As sometimes they might look only for people with a reference or specifically talented in particular skills. In this way, it is easy to identify the right candidate to hire for the position. Expectations have to be known clearly to make the hiring process faster.
5. Try to know the future need in advance:
Before the need arises, try to know the upcoming vacancies by conducting various surveys among the team leads or product managers. Make sure you conduct a small one on discussion with the respective leads to knowing their need prior. By doing this, will reduce the time during the interview process as generally, it takes around a minimum of six months to select a candidate.
6. Outsourcing is also a good option:
Sometimes due to fewer staff or multiple hiring locations in the human resource department, the hiring process might get delayed. If that is the scenario, try to outsource from a staffing consultancy for hiring employees.
This has become very common in many big level organizations as they don’t have time to concentrate on many things. Even though this process may cost a bit expensive, it hugely reduces the time as well as administration costs.
These types of hiring consultancies will take care of screening interviews, telephonic interviews and send only really worthy candidates to the final part of the interview.
7. Try to be in reach with the candidates:
It is very important for the recruiters to always be in reach with the candidates. This may also reduce the time as missed mails or phone calls will only disturb the communication and delay the progress of hiring.
Always try to keep updating the candidates, and respond quickly as sometimes they tend to deviate from the offer because of too many opportunities in the market.
8. Never set false expectations:
Be it any job role senior or middle level, make sure you don’t set false expectations about the schedule, salary limit, time shifts, or job role. This will only break the trust and will reduce the image of the concerned organization.
The realistic approach is always expected by staffing professionals. Never set false expectations, as once when the trust is broken, job seekers might tend to take time to decide about the job offer, and hence it will reduce the speed of the overall hiring process or recruitment procedure.
9. Use all the latest technology possible:
In this technology era, the latest technological developments have also taken importance in the process of the recruitment field. The use of the conventional methods of face to face interviews has become very difficult as it consumes a lot of time in travel, accommodation expenses when the candidate comes from a long distance, etc.
Using technological advancement like skype interviews, online tests, psychometric online test that will reduce the time as well as speed up the hiring process.
10. Be aware of the market:
Before starting the recruitment methods or process, it is very important to analyze the market about the recent salary scale expected for the job role. By this lot of time is saved during the interview process as the end of the day salary plays important to the candidate.
Updating the salary scale of the company in the career part will also speed up the process of selection and recruitment, as in, only the candidate who is satisfied with the salary scale will proceed.
11. Fix a proper methodology for hiring:
Fix a proper methodology or a formal hiring procedure as it will make the candidate clear about the process and it will also reduce the unnecessary delay in explaining the steps to the candidate as well it will make the hiring process steps very fast and formal. Having a proper hiring methodology will make the process simple, and clear to the candidate.
12. Avoid unnecessary delay:
Once after confirming the vacancy from the business team, try to get the exact time when the vacancy has to be filled from the organization.
It is very important to keep up the schedule for an interview for hiring. So that the hiring process can plan according to the time limit and unnecessary delays can avoid.
13. Be proactive to get the right candidates:
According to the recent survey by a social media website, around 40% of the fully employed candidates looking for better opportunities. This happens due to more financial needs as well as employees tend to bore by the same job routine.
Henceforth, it is better to be proactive and keep updating the career websites or job boards about the company to attract the right candidates.
14. Follow the deadline:
Once when the job vacancy has created the recruiters will get a formal deadline from the business department to fill the vacancy. Never increase or decrease the deadline for job vacancy once fixed, as sometimes it will reduce the transparency and it will tend the job seekers to ask for more time limit. Maintain the deadline to avoid unnecessary confusion and to speed up the hiring procedure.
15. Documentation is necessary:
It is very essential to maintain a separate document for all the processes happening in the organization. In that case, documenting each step of the hiring process is necessary as it will help for future reference and sometimes the candidates who missed the final round might fit in some other positions later in the organization. Hence, this may indirectly help to speed up the hiring process and saves a lot of time.
Some other key strategies or ways you should have a look at are as follows,
- Pick the job board wisely
- Create a good job advertisement
- Take the help of your staff to recruit
- Make it optimized for the mobile audience
- Share it on social media for wider audience reach
- Limit the number of candidates you agree to see.
- Think about flexible interviews
- Make use of group interviews
- Consider telephonic/video interviews
- Do not delay the offer
- Push them to join as early as possible
Speed Hiring Process Without Compromising on Quality:
The hiring process differs from one organization to another and also from niche to niche. Rushing too much can lead to hiring up a wrong candidate for the job role, which can turn out to be negative for the organization.
Basically, during interviews, even the best hiring managers cannot guess how long will they be able to hire the right candidate for the organization. The best way to face this situation is to cut down unnecessary stages in hiring and be clear about your job requirements.
Average time taken by different industries:
S.no Business US Canada 1 Administrative/ HR 40 35 2 Analyst / Consulting 57 54 3 Customer Service 40 38 4 Engineering 62 60 5 Finance/ Accounting 46 45 6 Information Technology/ Design 56 51 7 Marketing/ Advertising/ Creative 54 50 8 Sales/ Business Development 52 48
Industry sectors with the longest interview processes:
S.no Industry No. of days 1 Government 53.8 2 Aerospace & Defense 32.6 3 Energy & Utilities 28.8 4 Biotech & Pharmaceuticals 28.1
Industry sectors with the shortest interview processes:
S.no Industry No. of days 1 Restaurants & Bars 10.2 2 Supermarkets 12.3 3 Private Security 11.6 4 Automotive 12.7
Source: Glassdoor
Time Wasting Stages in the Recruitment Process:
- Posting an unclear job description
- Scanning of the resume manually
- Final interview rounds of the hiring process
- Checking personal reference
- Manual communication with candidates
- Lack of tools and technology
- Slower decision-making process
Conclusion:
As rightly said, employees, are the backbone of any organization. And selecting the right candidate will never tedious when few things properly followed and maintained.
Remember speeding up the hiring process should be according to the company’s total count. When it is approximately 500, speeding up the process can be made very quickly. But for more than 2000, it can take time.
According to the area experts, the hiring process should never make slow or too fast. A good human resource professional is the one who knows to select the right employee at the right time.
Try to follow a few procedures to speed up the process as well as select the right candidate. Henceforth, hiring is very important to any organization, and as it should be done with proper format and at the right time.
