Three Reasons to Keep Your Recruiting Process as Short as Possible
This past weekend, I reposted LinkedIn user Keeton Hayes’ post where he summarized his full-time job search process that just passed the one-year mark. I could relate, having experienced long stretches looking for a new, in-house, full-time job myself at various times from 2018 to 2022.
What floored me about his post was where he said that his longest interview process stretch with a single employer was 3.5 months.
Think about that: an employer couldn’t make up its mind about whether Keeton was the right person for the job — and kept him and other shortlist candidates in a holding pattern — for three and a half months. That’s more than a quarter’s worth of time! Surely this employer was able to make other important business decisions within those same 3+ months.
Here’s why you should always strive to bring the same efficiency approach you use in other parts of your business to your recruiting process.
Here are my top three reasons to proactively work to keep your recruiting process as short as possible:
To grab a great candidate off the market ASAP. My most recent in-house employment was for national recruiting firm Mission Recruiting. One of their recruiting best practices they share with their clients is to pounce on a candidate who looks great — and ignore the impulse to keep waiting for a perfect, or “unicorn”, candidate. Why? Because it’s most likely that a candidate who has passed all your hurdles will work out for at least the medium term, if not through the long term. Your organization will benefit from filling that chair — and the revenue generation that comes with it — sooner, and will likely lose money while you wait for a unicorn worker to emerge.
To foster a positive brand experience with screened candidates (especially with shortlist candidates who completed multiple interviews). This is a reason that’s not talked about as much, but IMO — and in my experience as a former in-house recruiter during my time at AppliancePartsPros.com — it is incredibly important. People talk. You don’t want candidates who’ve been waiting and waiting to hear on your hiring decision, or who were told “No” after a very long time, badmouthing your organization. This bad impression among your stakeholder “class” of screened-and-passed job candidates can spill out and affect your other stakeholders. One example of this is a disgruntled, rejected candidate writing a negative review on Google or Glassdoor. With the latter, as a company you can publicly refute the review (“He didn’t actually work here, he only interviewed with us”), but Glassdoor won’t remove it, so that blemish is there forever. Why court the possibility of this happening with a really long interview and decision-making process?
To make efficient use of your recruiter time and resources. This point is highly relevant to small businesses and nonprofit organizations, who tend to have smaller HR/recruiting departments than medium and large companies. In many small businesses and nonprofits, one person handles the entire HR function. And since HR encompasses increasingly complex compliance responsibilities, time for candidate screening and interviewing is perennially squeezed. In short, if your goal is to scale your employees to manage growth, a highly efficient recruiting and hiring process respects your mission and goals and top job candidates’ time.
OK, so what’s a good maximum time threshold for per-role recruiting?
A reasonable goal for small firms and nonprofits is 45 days. One related finding from my time at Mission Recruiting is that applications for a role through third-party sites like ZipRecruiter start to really wane after 30-45 days.
If your organization finds that, over time, your efficiencies in processes and communications lead to a hiring decision typically well under 45 days, you could reset this threshold to a more aggressive 30 days.
If you’re currently at 60 days or longer, just imagine what the time savings could do for your bottom line, with the extra time being thoughtfully repurposed within your organization. And consider the increased respect and improved brand reputation you’ll garner from your community of interested job seekers — especially if some of them later become your customers, clients, or donors.
