Because of today's competitive job market, there is growing pressure toward speed in hiring. But speed should never be allowed to take precedence over quality. A speedy hiring process may save time in the short term but often ends up resulting in expensive mis-hires, increasing turnover rates, and ultimately impacts team dynamics and productivity negatively. The balance, therefore, lies in ways of reducing time-to-hire while still ensuring that every candidate hired is a high-quality fit.
Here's our strategic guide to do just that:
Clearly Define the Role
Ambiguity in job description is probably one of the most prevalent causes for slowness in hiring processes. Unclear or over-general role definitions lead to mismatches and multiple interview rounds just to find out if the candidates will fit. A clearly defined role, qualifications, and responsibilities can better attract candidates who fit your needs from the very beginning. In this regard, you want to work closer with hiring managers and teams on the identification of:
Must-have skills vs nice-to-haves
Key responsibilities and goals
Success metrics and growth opportunities
When the role is well-defined, sourcing becomes targeted, and screening is even more efficient.
Source and Screen with the Assistance of Technology
Technology in hiring has come a long way, enabling HR teams to hasten traditionally time-consuming steps without sacrificing quality.
Automated Sourcing Tools: Consolidations like LinkedIn Recruiter, AI-driven talent marketplaces, and other sourcing tools have made it easier for recruiters to zero-in on candidates matching defined criteria at an unimaginable speed and precision than traditional manual sourcing.
Applicant Tracking Systems: An ATS will enable you to sort out, filter, and manage applications in minimal time. Most of the ATS solutions are capable of parsing resumes to keywords and qualifications; thus, they highlight top candidates with automation so you don't need to waste your time sifting through every other application manually.
Video Interviewing Software: Employ video interviewing software to run preliminary rounds more efficiently. Many positions will find asynchronous video interviews-in which applicants record responses to pre-set questions at their leisure-informative and time-saving, compared to traditional phone screenings.Integrating these tools into your hiring process not only accelerates candidate assessment but does so by applying repeatable methods of structured evaluation whereby you can objectively assess each applicant.
Pre-Screen Candidates with Skill Assessments
A candidate might look perfect on paper, but they may not have the set of skills to be successful in that position. Pre-screening assessments filter those who don't fit the qualifications and save times by narrowing the pool earlier.
Online Skill Assessments: Conduct specific-to-role assessments through online channels to gauge the level of hard and soft skills. Examples include online technical tests for software developers, writing assignments for content-related positions, situational judgment tests for customer service-related roles, and more.
Behavioural Assessments: Most companies make use of behavioural or personality assessments to measure cultural fit and interpersonal skills. But while technical skills are important, there are a lot of soft skills of the candidate and just how he's going to fit into the company culture that really matters for long-term success.
Invest in skill assessments so you can make quicker and better decisions on who to take through to the next part of the process.
Simplify Interview Stages
One of the culprits affecting time-to-hire is very often the interview process. In order not to sacrifice depth for efficiency during the interviews, the following can be done:
Limit the Number of Rounds: Identify the bare minimum number of interviews you need to feel comfortable with a candidate. Very often, this may be three rounds: phone screen, team interview, and final interview.
Combine Interview Panels: Whenever possible, combine interviews onto single panels instead of having to schedule several one-on-one interviews with different stakeholders. This approach can drastically reduce scheduling conflicts and also allows team members to collaborate in real time on evaluating each candidate.
Using Structured Interviews: The questions for structured interviews are always the same and therefore diminish subjective judgment and biased comparisons among candidates.
In general, structured interviews have improved predictive values with real job performance and diminished legal risks of making subjective judgments against applicants based on factors unrelated to the job. Smarter interviews also improve the candidate experience. When candidates feel their time is valued, they're more likely to think highly of your company-even if they aren't hired.
Implement Clear, Consistent Communication
Delays in hiring often happen because of bottlenecks in communication. Slow responses, waiting for internal feedback, leaving candidates in the dark-all these can extend time-to-hire needlessly. To keep things moving:
Set SLAs for Feedback: Setting the SLAs for providing feedback after every round allows people to be accountable and prevents any bottlenecks in giving feedback. Institute a policy where feedback after every round is provided within 48 hours to ensure timely decision-making.
Automate Candidate Communications: Automated messaging can keep candidates informed throughout the process. Most ATS platforms include the feature of sending automatic status updates.
Centralise Internal Collaboration: Interview notes, candidate scoring, feedback, and all related activities are done in shared digital workspaces so that the hiring team members can access and contribute to the evaluation in one place. It creates a kind of transparency whereby hiring decisions can be made more quickly without repeated meetings.
Balancing speed and quality in hiring isn't just possible; it's essential in today's market. Companies that focus on decreasing time-to-hire, without giving up anything in the quality of the hire, end up filling positions more quickly and are much more likely to retain the star talent that drives business outcomes.
However if you feel you don’t have the time or resources then Source Recruit can help with every step and help you streamline your process, so you could have staff members in as little as 48 hours. Contact us to find out how.
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