To hire top talent and ensure your business remains competitive, you must make the hiring process faster.
If your current hiring process takes too long, the best candidates will likely move on to other companies.
Speed and efficiency are critical components of a good hiring process at all phases, including recruitment, assessments, interviews, background checks, and making a job offer.
At iprospectcheck, we conduct thousands of background checks for employers in every U.S. state and strive to make the process as fast, reliable, and efficient as possible.
Here is a guide to how to reduce the time to hire at your organization and attract and retain key talent.
Key Takeaways
- Time to hire refers to the time that elapses between the date a candidate applies and when they accept your job offer.
- To reduce time to hire, streamline your hiring process, create compelling job descriptions, simplify your application process, build a talent pipeline, gather relevant data for insights, implement skills-based hiring, optimize your interview methods, expedite background checks, use an ATS, enhance your careers webpage accessibility, incentivize employee referrals, and maintain regular communication with applicants throughout the process.
- By decreasing time to hire, your organization can stay competitive, attract quality candidates, and enhance your reputation.
What is Time to Hire?
Your company’s time to hire is how long it takes from the time a candidate submits a resume or application and when they accept an offer.
If you reduce the time to hire at your organization, it can enhance your company’s brand and improve the candidate’s experience with your hiring and onboarding process.
Time to hire is a critical metric for your company’s recruitment efforts.
By measuring and tracking the time to hire, you can gain a better understanding of your organization’s success with hiring.
Time to hire can also be used to identify areas in which your hiring process needs improvement.
Your company can optimize the hiring process with this data by analyzing how long each step of the process takes and measuring your candidates’ satisfaction when the process is over.
Importance of Reducing Time to Hire
The labor market remains tight, and competition for quality candidates is stiff. This means you must move quickly to recruit and hire the best candidates whenever you have a job opening.
Today, applicants have many options when they are searching for new jobs. If your hiring process has too many delays, the best candidates could lose interest and move on to one of your competitors that makes faster hiring decisions.
Having a long hiring process can also make candidates feel as if your organization doesn’t respect them, which can negatively impact how they view your company.
If a former candidate has a negative experience, they might spread this information to others and avoid your products or services. This can translate into lost customers and revenue.
You also lose productivity and revenue when a position remains open for a long time.
If your company has vacancies for long periods, your other employees can become stressed, burned out, and experience decreased levels of job satisfaction.
Know Before You Hire
How to Reduce Time to Hire
Fortunately, you can implement several strategies to reduce the time to hire at your organization, including:
1. Create a Structured Process
Your recruitment and hiring processes need to be structured to ensure you attract quality candidates.
If your process is disorganized, it is unlikely that you will attract applicants with the degree of skill and experience you want.
Review every phase of your company’s recruitment and hiring process, including:
- Job description
- Job posting
- Talent identification
- Application process
- Pre-hire assessments
- Candidate selection
- Interview process
- Background checks
- Making offers
- Onboarding
To add structure, many companies leverage social media and job platforms to attract candidates and help with advertising.
However, you shouldn’t stop at attracting interest. Instead, analyze every phase of the process and create strong plans to retain the interest of top candidates that will also reduce the time to hire.
2. Create Compelling Job Descriptions
If your job description is poorly written, many potential applicants will scroll past it. Your goal should instead be to create a compelling and accurate description that will keep candidates on your page when they are searching online job boards.
Being short and concise is much better than a long-winded job description. Your company’s requirements and the job responsibilities should be clearly stated. Be honest about the salary range to improve your quality of hire and your company’s reputation.
Your job description should focus on the candidate qualities you are specifically looking for.
Creating a better job description can attract more candidates and reduce the time to hire.
3. Simplify the Application Process
If your application process is too long, some candidates will give up and move along. Simplify your application process by making it shorter.
Include a mobile version of your application so that applicants can easily apply on their smartphones.
Don’t ask candidates to replicate information that is already included in their resumes.
If your job is posted on an online platform, allow applicants to apply directly from it instead of having to switch between applications.
4. Use Resources to Create a Talent Pipeline
If you can create a pool of talent, your recruitment efforts will be easier. Having a pool of individuals who have skills that match your job requirements allows you to reach out when openings become available.
Look at the positions you hire for the most frequently and the skills those jobs require.
Use resources such as LinkedIn or HandShake to identify individuals with matching skills, and send messages to begin building rapport with them.
This can help to reduce the costs of recruiting because you’ll be able to reach out to skilled people with whom you’ve already connected.
5. Track and Gather Data
Calculate your average time to hire and time to fill to identify areas in your hiring process that need to be addressed. You should also assess the average cost your company spends per hire and its interviewing costs.
These data points can provide invaluable information to your human resources department so that they can improve their processes.
6. Implement Skills-based Hiring
Before your applicants receive an interview, ask them to take pre-interview aptitude tests and assessments.
This can help you ensure you only interview candidates that have the skills necessary for the job.
Aptitude tests also prevent both you and your applicants from wasting time when the position is not the right fit for them.
7. Streamline Your Interview Process
While interviews are important, scheduling too many interviews wastes time. Pre-screen candidates to ensure you only interview those who have been identified as having the skills necessary for the job.
Hold initial interviews over the phone or by video. These interviews should be short and structured so that the same questions are asked of each candidate. This allows easier comparisons and helps to prevent bias from affecting the process.
Invite the finalists to hold in-person interviews. These interviews should also be structured to gain a better feel for the candidates and help your hiring team make the right choice.
8. Streamline Background Checks
When you’re trying to reduce your company’s time to hire, the background check process can introduce significant and avoidable delays.
Instead of having your HR staff try to track down information from multiple agencies, schools, former employers, and other information sources, it’s best to partner with a background check company like iprospectcheck.
We conduct many types of background checks, and you can choose only the types that are relevant to your open positions instead of paying for information you don’t need.
Because of our extensive access to reliable information sources and advanced research techniques, we are often able to provide comprehensive, accurate, reliable, and legally compliant background check reports within a few hours to a couple of days.
Our mobile app allows candidates to keep apprised of the background check process at all stages, submit documents, and review reports. This helps to make their experience smoother and more enjoyable.
9. Implement Applicant Tracking Software (ATS)
Applicant tracking software (ATS) gathers and compiles applicant data into a single platform from which your HR staff can monitor the progress of your candidates through the hiring process.
An ATS also automates some processes and facilitates communication. With the automated features, an ATS can greatly reduce your time-to-hire and reduce your long-term hiring costs.
10. Make Your Careers Page More Accessible
Some companies neglect the careers page on their websites, but potential applicants are taught to search for an organization’s careers page when they are looking for a job.
Make sure your careers page is navigable, accessible, clear, and complete. This can help to attract people who are interested in working for your company.
Update your careers page regularly, and make sure job listings are easy to find and understand.
11. Incentivize Employee Referrals
Create an employee referral program at your company through which your employees can earn rewards when they refer a successful candidate.
In many cases, your employees will have friends who share similar interests and who might also be great fits for your company.
Employees frequently have networks within the industry. Creating an incentivized employee referral program allows you to tap into their pre-existing networks and access a larger talent pool.
12. Keep in Contact Throughout the Process
Make sure you keep in contact with your applicants throughout the hiring process.
When an applicant submits an application and doesn’t hear anything back for days, they might lose interest and turn elsewhere.
Make sure your applicants receive a confirmation that their applications have been received and are being reviewed.
Provide information about the next steps. Establish various points during the process at which applicants will receive additional information to show that your organization is still interested.
This helps to enhance your reputation and show your candidates that you value them.
iprospectcheck: Your Reliable Background Check Partner
Streamlining your background check process is a key way to reduce your company’s time to hire.
By partnering with an expert provider, you can greatly simplify the background check process and expedite your hiring process.
Contact iprospectcheck today to learn more about our background check services and receive a free quote: (888) 509-1979
DISCLAIMER: The resources provided here are for educational purposes only and do not constitute legal advice. Consult your counsel if you have legal questions related to your specific practices and compliance with applicable laws.
FAQs
How is the time to hire calculated?
Your company’s time to hire an applicant includes the time between when they apply to a position and when they accept your offer.
For example, if you advertise the position on Aug. 1, the candidate applies on Aug. 6, and they accept your offer on Aug. 21, your time to hire is 21 days minus six for a time to hire of 15 days.
You should also calculate your company’s average time-to-hire by reviewing metrics for multiple applicants, adding their times to hire up, and then dividing them by the number of applicants.
This can give you a good idea of your overall time-to-hire and whether you need to streamline your process.
What is time to hire vs. time to fill?
While the time to hire and time to fill are similar, there are some important differences.
The time to hire refers to the time that elapses between when your candidate submits an application and ultimately accepts your offer. By contrast, the time to fill is how much time elapses from the date a position becomes open and when you fill it.
The time to hire an applicant is included as a subset of the time to fill, but both metrics are important.
