What's Slowing Down Your Hiring Process?

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Competition for talent is stiff. Talent acquisition teams are scrambling to attract and hire top-tier candidates as quickly as possible. A SHRM Survey indicated that the average time it takes to fill a position is 36 days, though it varies across industries.
​The Health Service industry has an average time to hire of 49 days! Having a speedy hiring process gives you an advantage over your competitors. Since 47% of declined offers are due to candidates accepting other jobs, you can’t afford to be slow. So, what are the most common reasons for a slow recruiting process?
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1. Vague Job Requirements
Having qualified candidates from the start helps make the hiring process go a lot smoother and faster; less time will be spent on screening and interviewing unqualified candidates. Poorly written job descriptions result in a large number of unqualified applicants. Learn how to write the perfect job description and attract your ideal candidates from our previous blog post.

2. Inefficient Interviewing
No matter how much the recruiting process has evolved, interviews are unavoidable. And, it is this stage of the hiring process that can consume the most time. According to Glassdoor, the interview process takes an average of 22.9 days. In that span of time, your best candidate could have already accepted another job offer and finished the onboarding process with another company. How can you streamline the interview process?
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Pre-planning is key. Make sure all interviewees and interviewers are aware of the planned schedule. Have your own interview questions ready. Inform candidates of any documents they are required to bring. By taking care of the small details ahead of time, interviews will be conducted more efficiently.

3. Poor Collaboration and Communication
The hiring process involves more than just the recruiter. There’s usually more than one decision maker involved. It’s important for the whole team to understand the company’s hiring process and pipeline. Keep the whole team involved in the status of a candidate to avoid lag time between various members and stages.

4. Manual Sourcing Methods
You can’t just wait for your job post to gain traction. 90% of professionals are open to speaking to a recruiter but only 36% are actively looking or applying for job openings. However, reaching out to the remaining 54% of passive candidates can be time consuming and costly. Some hiring managers and recruiters spend 3 hours a day sourcing candidates, and their search criteria is usually limited to job titles. Traditional sourcing methods require talent acquisition teams to do even more research to identify candidates with relevant industry experience and product expertise. After sourcing, the next problem typically encountered is contacting the candidate. Unfortunately, direct contact information is not usually disclosed in a candidate’s online profile.
 
At headhuntr.io, we use Candidate Intelligence Data to revamp traditional recruiting methods. Instead of stalking job boards or professional networking sites, we use our database of 300+ million candidate profiles to source the top-tier of qualified candidates. Each profile is tagged with relevant candidate, company, and contact information. This data-driven approach allows us to quickly identify candidates that meet (or beat) your job’s requirements. By providing our customers a customized candidate pool, we help cut down on time and resources spent by talent acquisition teams on sourcing.

To speed up your hiring process while still maintaining a high quality of hire, you must learn to utilize new recruiting techniques. It’s not enough to be subscribed to premium business social networks or have the best available Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Using the same tools and methods as your competitors will only yield the same results/candidates.

Incorporating data science into your recruitment process provides your talent acquisition team more concrete candidate information. The abundance of data allows you to make more informed hiring decisions, along with improving your time to fill and reducing your cost per hire. Learn more about the benefits of data-driven recruiting by sending us an email at contact@headhuntr.io.