Mar 20, 2017
At Precision Sourcing we experience the good, the great and “why are you bothering” when it comes to recruitment processes (a blog for another day). For the record time to hire for this purpose is from the moment a candidate is in play until secured in a contract.
Why is the time to hire important?
- It represents you and paints a picture of you as a brand and business i.e. are you organised, efficient, structured and able to get stuff done efficiently! Or, you are a joke! We had a client who took nine months to eventually secure a candidate in the Data Analytics space in 2016. I won’t name and shame, but as you could imagine there was a lot of layers of interference, boxes to tick, positions to be justified, bureaucracy and general nonsense before they were lucky enough to secure the candidate. They had been overseas on a secondment project. Therefore, the timings worked out, fortunately.
- It indicates how quickly or slowly you can onboard resources – productivity if they are on board quickly
- It motivates your suppliers accordingly – show me a great recruiter who would want to work with a client that doesn’t take their time to hire seriously or at least have some understanding of ‘the need for speed’ – Top Gun
What is the norm?
Contract – 5 working days (x 1 interview process)
Perm – 10 working days (x 2 interview process)
There is no science behind these figures. I simply analysed the objective date for those great clients we work with that are kicking goals in their respective markets. By the way, for me, a great client is a business that people great talent wants to work for and is reluctant to leave when presented with opportunities.
Now there is always the anomaly, and senior positions that may require an extra interview or two to satisfy both parties, but as a KPI the above is a great line in the sand for your recruitment team/hiring managers. As a C-level person, I would be targeting my business on time to hire.
So how can you improve your time to hire?
1) Know what your current time to hire is today and accept the need to change if it isn’t hitting the above – maybe ask a recent hire if the information isn’t available or ask a trusted supplier about the perception of your time to hire
2) Set a realistic target within the team, if you are a big corporate that moves like a sleuth then be realistic, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we weren’t on that job
3) Set up processes internally that mean discussions regarding candidates are not across email. Book a daily, bi-daily or weekly meeting recurring in the diary to discuss candidates and make decisions
4) Be accountable and understand that you, as a leader, need to make decisions, we hear a lot of “I have passed the CV to the team to review” and “our process has always been like this”.
5) Select and trust your recruitment partners/suppliers that understand your business and culture (no need to even review CV’s, just book them straight into the interview process)
6) Understand the back office challenges around contracts and approvals. Make sure everyone is committed to the challenge of speeding up the process.
I would like to champion some clients now that have a great time to hire but I won’t, as that would be silly, but I will ask some of my recruiters to forward this to their great clients that are hitting the above, so they know that they are loved.
