Do You Have a Personnel Problem or a Procrastination Problem? (Or Both?)
In this booming economy, with record low unemployment, many company’s number one complaint is they can’t find enough good, qualified employees. Most employers, however aren’t looking at it from the other side of the coin. They aren’t doing themselves any favors by having a long, drawn hiring process and/or unrealistic hiring criteria. Consider the following from a Robert Half study on the length of the hiring process.
- 23% of Candidates will wait just one week.
- 39% of Candidates say 7 to 14 days Is too long.
- 24% viewed 15 to 21 days as excessive.
- Nearly one-third (32%) said a protracted hiring process makes them question the organization’s ability to make other decisions.
- The average time to hire in construction is 12.7 days.
- Sometimes, your competitors may secure your best candidates before your hiring team extends them a job offer. Also, longer hiring processes might impact your candidate experience and cause them to self-select out.
What should you do?
- If you have a perfect employee you probably trained/created that individual. Be less concerned with specific skill sets on focus more on culture fit and aptitude to learn.
- Have a timely well-planned interview schedule that gets qualified Candidates in front of all the needed people at your Company in a fast, quality manner.
- Communicate with qualified applicants with 24 to 48 hours of first contact (responding to your post, referred in or presented by a recruiter).
- Provide complete transparency to the applicant on all the steps in your hiring process.
- Have a standard set of interview questions so apples to apples comparisons can be done on interviewed Candidates.
- Keep in constant contact with qualified Candidates.
- Consider using an industry-specific recruiter.
Good times or bad, it is always challenging to find a good employee, but whether you have 5 employees or 50 employees a concise, fast, well thought out hiring process will greatly increase your chances of success and give you a competitive advantage.