We recently covered the costs of taking too long to fill a position at your company in our blog post on The Benefits of Using a Recruiter VS Direct Application - Part 2. To help you ensure that problems don’t arise in the hiring process and that it doesn’t take a long time to fill that open position, here are some tips that will help you retain your top-choice candidate pool.
Job Descriptions
Some recruiting firms will help you with this aspect of the hiring process, but it is essential to have a well-drafted job description that does more than inform candidates about the open job. A good job description will help candidates understand what will be expected of them if they are hired and why the opportunity and company should appeal to them. Without a detailed description of the role available, candidates are more likely to second guess their interest in the role.
Pipeline
Something that recruiting professionals specialize in is maintaining an active candidate pool. If you decide not to use a firm to assist you in the hiring process, be sure to have your own pipeline of candidates to fall back on if your preferred candidate doesn’t end up working out. Having a backup list of qualified and vetted candidates ensures that you won’t have to start from scratch and no time will be wasted if the first-choice candidate falls out.
The Interview Process
The interview stages are where a lot of candidates drop out of the process. There are a few things to keep in mind when conducting interviews:
Make sure there aren’t too many people involved in interviewing a candidate. We recommend no more than 5 interviewers for individual contributors and lower-level management positions.
Ask questions you want the answer to: don’t waste time asking “fluffy” questions
Incorporate a structure in your interviews that assists you in evaluating candidates more consistently. Adopting a scorecard method of evaluation can help ensure everyone is on the same page.
The interview is a conversation, not an interrogation - sell as much as you grill.
Communication
You will lose your candidates if you drop off from contact. After an interview, either schedule the next step right then or follow up quickly. If you’re taking time to consider your options, keep in contact. If your hiring manager is going on vacation, make sure there is someone lined up to continue the dialogue with the candidate.
If you pause contact with the candidate for too long, they are likely to think that you are no longer interested and will look for other opportunities. Be transparent about what the process will look like for them. Keeping up the communication with your candidates will help the hiring process run smoothly and will help prevent candidates from dropping out of your pipeline.
Don’t Waste Time
If you’ve decided who you want to hire, don’t delay sending the offer. You’re at the finish line of the hiring process, and your preferred candidate will drop off in favor of other opportunities if you take too long to send the offer out. When making the offer, do it via Zoom, in-person, or over the phone, and be sure to communicate your excitement about the prospect joining the company. Having others from the interview panel or executives reach out to congratulate the candidate can also help.
17% of candidates reported that they attribute their negative experiences to companies taking too long during the hiring process. Review your current process and eliminate any unnecessary steps that only take time. Analyze what step in the process you lose the highest number of candidates and consider what needs to be done to decrease that number. Cutting out these unnecessary steps will help you speed up your hiring process.
The Advantages
Speeding up your hiring process benefits you in many ways. One of the more notable advantages is the leg up you will have over your competitors; you will get to hire the best candidates before they can. Another advantage is that it will help you cut down on the cost of leaving that position open. Furthermore, and most importantly, speeding up your hiring process will help keep candidate fall-off rates low. When people decide to embark on a job search, they want to find a new position ASAP. For you, it’s going to be harder to keep playing catch-up than reviewing and making changes to your hiring process.