How To Make The Hiring Process Faster

By Jeanette Maister

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Hiring the right employee is the most important, strategic process a business will accomplish. The largest challenges are finding balance in speed and quality of hire. Even more difficult and frustrating is when job candidates face a long-winded process, resulting in loss of top talent within a blink of an eye. Not to mention, it's incredibly expensive. The average cost-per-hire for companies is $4,129, according to SHRM. So it’s perfectly logical to want the hiring process to move faster!

How do I make my hiring process faster?

  1.    Rejuvenate Your Hiring Process
  2.    Candidate Engagement and Recruitment Marketing
  3.    Implement an Employee Referral Program
  4.    Enhance the Pre-screening Process
  5.    Test Candidates You’re Serious About
  6.    Collect Input From Others in the Hiring Process.
  7.    Avoid Long Lapses

Today, employees who were once reluctant to leave a job for fear of losing security are now more likely to make a move. 52% of employees said they’d be willing to leave their current job if a better opportunity came along, while another 44% said they were actively looking for a new job. 

The time required for hiring processes has grown dramatically in recent years. In a study conducted by Glassdoor Data, the average overall job interview process takes 22.9 days. Job interview processes are getting longer, and have grown by 3.3 to 3.7 days since 2009. Hiring a candidate too fast may result in a hire that isn’t a good fit for your company, but moving too slowly runs the risk of losing talented candidates.

Discover these 7 ways to accelerate the hiring process to snag top talent:

Rejuvenate Your Hiring Process

Change your hiring process to be current and innovative. This may mean adding automated assessments or video interviewing technology to your process. Using automation lets you stay in constant contact with potential hires, facilitates human interaction through CRM tools and progresses large volumes of candidate applications quickly and reliably saving time and money. Automation also allows businesses to search, sort and filter candidates into set tiers from data gathered, allowing the most qualified candidates to shine through.

The world of recruiting is continuously changing. Companies need to change with the times and implement modern talent acquisition strategies. More than 50% of employees say they have different values than their employer. How can you know if your values will resonate with potential applicants if you never share them online or in your recruiting methods?

Candidate Engagement & Recruitment Marketing

Today’s top talent are looking for companies with great culture, values, a genuine purpose and competitive pay. Many of them are using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find their next job opportunity.

Using social media to grab job seekers attention is just the first step. Showing your company culture and dynamic through photos and social posts and on your career site will entice top talent to dig deep and research your company. Also, contextual placement of messaging on your career site is key. Be sure to tailor your recruitment strategies for different generations. For example, Millennials may prefer recruitment texting over a phone call. Hosting open houses or participating in recruitment events are also great ways to engage candidates. Discover how to manage recruitment events with a competitive advantage, engage with top talent and accelerate the hiring process for your organization. 

Implement an Employee Referral Program

The best talent often comes from internal hires or employee referrals. Study after study has proven what many savvy CEOs and recruiters already know… Employees hired via referral programs are more likely to stay with a company longer than those hired through other channels. An employee referral program allows your employees to do a lot of the recruitment work for you. This will save days off the time spent recruiting and hiring and cut advertising costs. Also, candidates that have a personal relationship with a current employee are more likely to accept job offers.

Your new employee referral program does not have to be complicated or expensive. Often participation in a referral program actually dips when the award is higher, likely due to the draconian processes employees must go through to gain their reward. Instead, try old school methods like simply asking your employees who they know and assuring them you’ll walk them through the process yourself. 

Enhance the Pre-screening Process

Get to know candidates before they move through the hiring pipeline. Successfully conducting candidate pre-screening allows you to weed out both those who exaggerate on their application and determine those who have the desired cultural fit, drive and character that the position demands. Ask a “killer question” to determine right off the bat if an applicant qualifies for the position they want to apply for. This question can set the minimum expectation upfront and determine if the candidate is qualified for the job. The main perks to pre-screening applicants are to focus on interviewing the best applicants, reduce hiring errors and decrease company turnover.

Pre-screening helps recruiters and hiring managers to only be working with applicants who can meet the minimum standards and qualifications of a candidate without having to glance at the resume beforehand. Candidates also benefit from pre-screening. Completing the questions during the pre-screening process allows candidates to determine if they are a good fit for the company.

Screening candidates will look different to every employer. Some might use a sophisticated AI algorithm to determine fit, while others feel more comfortable with coding challenges or assignments. Did you know AI technology automatically identifies if you will want to interview a candidate or not from the moment an application is submitted? Because intelligent recruiting can help recruiters come to these conclusions based on historical data and real recruiting results, recruiters can save time and focus on building relationships with candidates by providing a more personalized candidate experience.

Some companies decide assessments are the best option, while a simple automated video or phone screen can work for other organizations. Whatever you decide to do, pre-screening, when implemented properly, can shave hours, days, even weeks, off your hiring process.

Test Candidates You’re Serious About

Companies can identify candidates that are most likely to perform well on the job with pre-employment testing. Besides saving time and money, it adds to the selection process by decreasing turnover and even improving company morale.

Studies show that up to 63% of candidates embellish skills and experience on their resumes. In order to ensure your new hire has the ability to do the job, pre-employment testing can help avoid costly mistakes or help you structure an offer that provides proper training if they are otherwise a good fit. 

Collect Input From Others in the Hiring Process

Including others in the hiring process will greatly increase the odds of finding the best candidates and help eliminate biases. Having the candidate meet more than one employee will help them get to know the company better. In this process, your hiring team will see if they mesh with your company culture and ensure your company hires the right candidate as swiftly as possible. While it can make scheduling a little tougher, a team-based approach to hiring often yields better results than one person wielding all hiring authority. Technology can help manage the interview process. Accelerate the hiring process with our candidate and recruiter friendly software to enhance and ease the interview process.

 Avoid Long Lapses

While it can be difficult for large companies, with busy hiring managers to do so, do what you can to tighten up the time between screen, test, interview and hire. The only thing you should truly wait for are reference checks. Gather them during the phone screen so you can gather them while the interviewee goes through the rest of the process and you have all the information you need to make your offer once you decide they’re the one!

By hiring the right people, your company is able to build a community of involved successful, engaged employees who want to establish a strong company presence. Conducting the right amount of research, and implementing these steps may just land you your next star employee—faster than ever before.

About Jeanette Maister:

Global talent acquisition technology leader with extensive experience in global talent acquisition, applicant tracking systems & recruiting technology, recruiting metrics and process. Deep insight into all aspects of campus recruiting strategy. Recognized for driving growth and helping clients transform their recruiting efforts.

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