5 Process Improvement Strategies to Shorten Your Time to Hire

By and large, companies just jump into their hiring process without a real plan. This often leads to a disjointed process that can take longer than necessary to complete. As anyone who has ever hired a decent amount knows from experience, time kills all deals. Companies that don’t have a well-defined process may find themselves losing out on the candidates they want to hire. These 5 tips will help you shorten the distance between candidate identification and start date. 1. Establish Requirements and Goals It’s critical to lay out in writing the job description, the salary requirements and the void this position is filling, prior to starting the recruitment process. Having it in writing will give your team a clear understanding of what you are looking to accomplish with this hire. It is important that you get everyone on board. If there are others in the organization that will be involved in the interview process, in an effort to be efficient, make sure everyone knows their role so there is little to no overlap. Ensuring everyone has an equal but different role in the interview process will eliminate the risk of both boring the candidate, and sending the message that there’s a lack of communication within the organization. 2. Share the Goals and Expectations with your Executive Recruiter Including your executive recruiter/placement consultant in your hiring plans will help ensure that the candidate understands your process. Conveying the details of your interview process and timeframe to hire can eliminate the risk of losing candidates due to miscommunication and the drawn out uncertainties in your process. Open communication also allows for flexibility, particularly when you’re dealing with an active candidate who is being courted by your competitors. Darrin Davidson, President of FPC of Crystal Lake said, “experience has shown that the more a hiring manager includes me in their process, the better chance I have in being able to secure the person they want to hire.” 3. Quickly Set Aside the Time to Interview Sometimes organizing an interview panel is like herding cats. Don’t let the fact that one executive on the interviewing team is out of the office postpone the whole process. With all of the technology available today, it is very easy to set up a video conference using Skype or FaceTime. Getting the bulk of your face to face interviews scheduled and completed in a timely fashion could be the difference in getting your top candidate an offer in time for them to make a decision in your favor. 4. Give Timely Feedback One of the worst things a company can do is not provide timely feedback after a candidate has invested their time on-site with your executive team. If you liked the candidate, but will need some time to wrap up the process, it’s important to have your executive recruiter let them know where they stand and what the timeframe is for next steps. Lack of communication and feedback is a sure-fire way to turn off the candidate. It’s just as important to close the loop on candidates who will not make it to the offer stage. One of the most common things I hear from our executive recruiters is that the greatest appreciation they get from their candidates is when they tell them they ‘didn’t’ get the job in a timely manner. Set a follow up call 24 hours post interview with your team so you can collect information and give the feedback to the candidate. 5. Be Decisive Decision making is not always easy, in fact it ra

rely ever is. Creating and following a replicable process as outlined above will put you in the best position to make a timely decision. In your post interview debrief with your team, candidates should be classified in one of 3 categories: not a fit, moving on to the next round, or making an offer. Keeping it simple will allow for quick decision making. A lot of your employment brand is dictated by the hiring process you establish and how well you stick to it. A tight process can help tip the scales in your favor and position you to secure the candidates you desire. One of our good clients referred to recruiting as a “sloppy art.” Hopefully these tips will help you to apply some useful science. Once you have a well-established process, be sure not to lose your best candidates by making one of these top 3 mistakes "Top 3 Reasons Why You're Losing Your Best Candidates". Good luck, and let us know how we can help!