A good recruiter doesn’t just match candidates and clients. They’re a source of advice for both sides into the bargain. And it seems like for the past few months, I’ve found myself giving one piece of advice more than any other: the way the market’s behaving at the moment, you need to move quickly on candidates.
Hiring Processes Need to Evolve
A lot of our assumptions about the hiring process were formed during an employer-driven marketplace. Today, though, we’re working in a candidate-driven environment.
It’s unfair (and inaccurate) to say that this means the candidates have all the power. At the end of the day, it’s still employers making the important decision.
But competition with other employers is at a high, and that means that the person making the decision might be working somewhere else.
The clock is ticking right from the beginning. If your business has a policy of three interviews before a decision, how long does that take?
Let’s say you put out your adverts and you allow three to four weeks for applications; we’ll be generous and say you only allow three. You make your decision and make your initial phone calls to arrange interviews. This will take a couple of days, and it can be a week or more before a candidate is free for interviews; your first set of interviews will be about two weeks after you start contacting applicants.
It'll take another 1-2 weeks to complete the first set of interviews, discuss them, and invite applicants back for the second set. Another week after that to complete the second set and put out feelers for the third.
If you’re lucky, third stage interviews might only be a couple of days, but another week is possible.
Even if we assume you get candidates immediately, and even if we assume you make your offer the day the final interview is complete, that’s anywhere from eight to ten weeks. Two and a half months.
With so many businesses out there trying to hire ERP specialists, all it takes is for someone else looking for the same skills to only require two (or even one) interviews and they’ll be making an offer before you’re ready for your final review. All of a sudden, the leader in your second round of interviews isn’t available.
The hiring process needs to evolve. One of the reasons my team has had the success we do is that we pre-qualify candidates before their CVs ever reach our clients; we can do this much more quickly than a first interview can be set up, and we immediately cut out the dead weight.
Our clients can be confident that if someone comes for interview through us, they’re capable of the work needed. An interview becomes a test for culture fit and motivation, and you don’t need three rounds to decide that.
Get in touch and we’ll help you evolve your hiring process.
