A business cannot be successful if it is not expanding and hiring. Getting the best talent is important for the success of a company, whether it is a small startup or a large enterprise. But hiring time is something that becomes too challenging with the increase in scale, as most of us know. The more time for hiring, the more lost candidates, which is increasingly expensive for your organization. Decreasing time to hire is not just about moving faster but also making the recruitment process more efficient and effective. We list out seven such well-proved strategies in this article that can help you fast-track your hiring process flow.
1. Well-Documented Operational Business Rules and Expectations
Unclear or vague job descriptions are one of the primary reasons companies are slowed to a crawl when hiring. When not everyone can begin with the end in mind—the role’s needs, expectations, and what great looks like—hiring becomes fragmented, a back-and-forth of: interview them/not; reject/maybe; be prepared to deliberate. Thus, the importance of defining clear job requirements and informing expectations at the beginning of the search to save time hiring.
This is usually done in conjunction with team leaders and the hiring manager, who work together to define the required skills, qualifications, and standout qualities of the role. This way, the whole recruitment process is streamlined down to unnecessary detours. Communicate these expectations explicitly upfront in your job posting to draw candidates who meet all of the criteria. By defining the responsibilities of a role, you can weed out non-qualified applicants early on in your hiring process.
2. Leverage Technology and Automation
Many of the time-consuming tasks involved with hiring have been replaced by technology. But, things like that cost money, and they will not reduce your time to hire as much. You can use technology in so many ways, from sourcing candidates to resume screening, interview scheduling and communication.
For example, Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are able to automate part of the resume screening process by filtering candidates through a set of criteria related to experience, skills and qualifications. It spares HR specialists from having to manually sift through hundreds of resumes. AI chatbots can be implemented to interact with candidates and handle their queries or even schedule interviews, which can reduce the time needed to engage manually at an early stage. Employing such technology can tremendously help in shortlisting your candidates and proceeding only with the best. This technology is known as an ATS.
3. Pre-Screen Candidates Early in the Process
Another strategy to reduce time to hire is pre-screening candidates early in the process. It can help to filter out the best candidates before they even reach an interview. Wherein the alternative process of waiting until you interview to see if that candidate can do the job or be a good fit & win-win for them and the company has YOU quickly run through asking if their credentials, experience, skills and deservedness even come close.
Conduct brief phone interviews, skills tests or surveys to qualify candidates. Instead, these actions assist you to be aware of the move and implement your recruiting technique with no complications. The sooner you can catch some red flags in that funnel process, the more humanely you will be able to handle a number of bad fit candidates hungry for an interview.
4. Standardise the Interview Process
One of the primary reasons for delayed hires is an erratic interview process. Each candidate would have a different way through which they can enter this pipeline, which causes some delays as well. Similarly, standardising the interview process means everything will be done in the same line, and all candidates are compared on one level, which helps segregation of the right candidate, with hiring happening at a faster phase.
Compile a set of standard questions related to the vacancy core areas and company culture. This would help interviewers focus on the relevant criteria per candidate, making sure that all candidates were fairly and consistently rated. Structured Interviews. Also, do structured interviews in which each candidate answers the same set of questions, so you can compare apples to apples. This was reducing the average time taken for an interview multiple-fold and resulted in an incredible ease of comparison between different candidates.
5. Engage the right stakeholders early on
Bring Key Stakeholders Into the Process ASAP: It all comes down to having the right players in the hiring process for day one. You see, hiring is mostly slow because the wrong stakeholders are involved for the wrong positions at the wrong time. Hiring delays can mean that hiring managers are not being primed early to provide their feedback on the role, or some (or all) of the people involved in picking who gets the job do not agree on what they need with a candidate.
Bring the right stakeholders to your app early on, so you don’t suffer from thrust-induced infections later on. That includes the hiring manager, higher-ups in the department, if there are any, and anyone else who will have input on this hire. The idea is that with appropriate stakeholderhood, you can expedite the decision-making process when meeting these people, as all parties are already aligned and bought into the company, rather than wasting time reconciling opinions.
6. Create a Positive Candidate Experience
A fast hiring process is not a race, it’s the best way to make the candidate happy after the interview. Frustrated candidates, who believe the hiring process is disorganised or taking too long, are likely to abandon ship, leaving you with a longer time to hire as you need to go back and find more desirable talent.
The more communicative and transparent you are, the better a candidate experience you create. Tell them when they will hear from you, what the next steps are and perhaps more importantly, who they should call if they want to follow up. Provide your response as soon as possible, and outline the different stages of the hiring process to candidates.
Additionally, there is nothing like a human touch to keep your candidates engaged and interested in the job.
Also, an organised process application would assist in verifying some of the inhibitors with applicants. A streamlined candidate experience is going to provide the quickest time-to-hire, and this will help to keep your talented candidates in the process, giving you real-time visibility of those on your radar.
7. Build a pipeline of future hiring. Can help facilitate mass-hire efforts
A talent pipeline not only helps you initiate low-touch recruiting for passive talent but also allows you to keep good tabs on connections as they come in, so that when hiring processes ramp up, and you need to staff at high speed, it becomes way easier and quicker for your team. However, a talent pipeline is really just A LOT of candidates that you can grab and hire when an open position becomes available. This keeps your pipeline full and reduces the time you have to spend on a position by having contacts that are familiar with the company and waiting for future We-Hire Opptys.
At this point, there are pretty much endless ways that you can build a talent pipeline. Social media, job fairs and networking events are places where you will be able to interact with potential candidates. While the less advanced tips focus and are centred on either hiring interns or apprentices, where you can evaluate how someone is a performer before they apply, and even have an already budding relationship.
Having a hot list means never having to recruit the volume you once did when they get forms back. Instead, you are proactively reaching out to people who have already shown interest in our organisation and, in so doing, speeding up the hiring process.
Conclusion
Time to hire is important, especially in today’s job market, where you want the best people in a tough segment where competitors may just pluck from your hands. With the methods we covered in this piece—defining exactly what kind of job it is you’re offering, using technology to make your process more efficient, screening for candidates as early as possible and in doing so, develop a consistent way how you interview prospects so that decisions get made quickly or by broad committees, delivering an attractive experience to good prospects who decide not to windustrializing industrializing a pipeline so that your firm has always a “bench” ready—you can limit the surface area of talent search quite dramatically.
The pace of doing the work is essential, but what happens if that speed results in more bad decisions? And while you are thinking about winning the war for talent, have a look at our latest insights on cutting through that information overload to hire. With these methods in place, you can have a recruitment process that flows much more easily and swiftly. Turnaround-filled positions are remarkably easier to tackle as well.
