Your slow moving hiring process is losing you talent!

Slow moving recruitment processes and failure to move swiftly on key hiring decisions is crippling many organisations ability to attract and win talented staff. You could be forgiven for thinking that in today’s fast paced race for talent, where skill shortages are increasing and organisations are in competition for the best people, that hiring managers are sharpening their recruitment processes and looking for ways to put themselves ahead of the game.

But with ‘time to hire’ figures growing at alarmingly quick pace, this is clearly not the case. So why not?

At the recent Australasian Talent Conference, best practice insight and technology company, CEB presented statistics on trends in hiring ‘health measures’ between 2010 and 2015 as assessed by their global survey of 6000 hiring managers and 900 recruiters.

The results of their survey painted an interesting picture:

There has been an almost 50% increase in the time it takes to fill vacant roles for internal recruiters (i.e. HR or recruitment staff within an organisation), but only a negligible increase in quality of hires.

With an average cost of an unfilled role at $500 per day, or $35,000 per vacancy (and even more for revenue generating roles), we see time to hire as a burgeoning issue requiring immediate attention.

Let’s put aside the obvious financial strain of a prolonged empty desk for a moment and take a look at some of other the negative consequences of this increased time to hire:

• Failure to secure key skills and top talent.
  Candidates with niche skills are in very high demand. Competition is so high that in half the time your recruitment process takes, they will have already been snapped up by someone else.

• Loss of productivity.
  The extra stress and pressure of having to stretch across additional work can lead to employee burnout and reduced output.
• Good people leave.
  We have seen entire teams break down with key members losing faith in management and moving themselves to better opportunities.
• Damage to your brand.
  The old adage that one person who has a negative experience will tell ten others is certainly true in this case.

So what can be done about this?
Accountancy firm KPMG has recently decided to make its recruitment process much shorter because millennial applicants (people born between 1980 and 2000) are getting frustrated by the old system. KPMG’s previous arrangement required three separate assessments, which took place over many weeks. The new process however, will be carried out in a single day – and candidates will find out in just two working days if they have landed the job. POW!

This decision follows a survey by KPMG in which more than a third of the 400 respondents said they were annoyed by the length of the application process. Even worse, more than half said they hated not getting any feedback if they did not get the job.

This is not the first time in recent times a big company has streamlined its recruitment process. A month ago, Goldman Sachs announced that it would scrap face-to-face interviews with undergraduates in favour of video interviews which were seen as an agile solution to speed up hiring.

Before you fall off your chair in outrage, we are certainly not suggesting that hiring any staff member without due consideration and due diligence is going to bring you a successful hire. It is however time to review your current hiring practices, take steps to help your organisation become ‘recruitment fit’ and be ready to win the race to secure top talent.

Our top tips:

• Identify the skill shortages your organisation is likely to face and develop programmes that build your network and talent pools in these areas proactively. Partner with a reputable recruitment consultancy that are specialists in this area to assist you. Their network will be much wider and deeper than yours, and they can keep your finger on the pulse of the market.
• Review your recruitment processes and cut out the bureaucratic red tape. Equip your organisation to be agile when it goes out to market for talent. This doesn’t mean don’t do the appropriate checks. Just do them quickly and efficiently and keep your candidates well informed of progress along the way. If you have not responded to candidates you have interviewed within 5 working days that is a major fail.
• Train your hiring managers appropriately so that they understand the consequences of poorly delivered and drawn out recruitment processes to organisational performance, finances and employer brand image.

Please contact David Harrington
Director at HorizonOne Recruitment
on 02 6108 4878 or [email protected]
Level 1, 27 Torrens Street, Braddon
www.horizonone.com.au/