How to Increase Your Hiring Speed

You often hear about the importance of increasing the speed of your hiring process based solely on its financial benefits, but what about the effect that quicker turnaround has for your applicants? Did you know that if it takes you a lengthy time to hire that you could be missing out on some rockstar candidates who jump in and jump out of the job market quickly?

If a great potential employee becomes available, don’t wait until a job opening is available to snatch them up

We’ve discussed the benefits available to you when you streamline your hiring process numerous times on this blog. Today, I’d like to touch on some specific steps for decreasing the amount of time it takes to bring on new hires and what obstacles typically stand in your way to make this a reality.

Pinpoint Bottleneck Issues

One of the keys to cutting down on time-to-fill is to document each step of your hiring process and determine how long it takes you on average to complete each step. In order to eliminate bottlenecking, you’ll want to identify which step in your process contains the most inconsistency or leniency in terms of time. See if you can develop a plan that is reliable by automating some of the components. Here are a few common areas that delay the process: scheduling an interview; resume screening; and approval for job requisitions.

Understand Metrics

This probably seems like a no-brainer, but I can’t tell you how many HR Professionals attend my presentation about this topic and are surprised to learn that the metrics they value and use to measure success are actually unimportant or misaligned with their organization’s vision. Most of you are already familiar with time-to-fill, but oftentimes, these standards vary from company to company, so please ensure that what you’re tracking is specific to you. You may also want to consider metrics like – time to start, a quality-of-hire metric, and benchmark data.

Think Outside the Box

I’ve preached this so much here that at this point, I’m sure you expect it to pop up at least once in my posts, but trust me, it really is that important. If you want to cut down on the amount of time it takes you to hire, then you’re going to have to change up your routine regularly. You know the saying: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Don’t get stuck in an insane hiring rut. Hire when no one else hires like December because it’s likely that your competitors won’t be hiring at that time so you’ll have less competition. Also, if a great potential employee becomes available, don’t wait until a job opening is available to snatch them up. Create a position for them.

The key is to never stop learning and evolving. Once you accept that change will forever be a loyal and faithful companion vital to your progression, you can and will accomplish anything/everything.

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