improving the time to hire.

Understaffed teams place pressure on the organisation and result in delayed execution. For customer focused organisations, this translates to dissatisfied clients and, therefore, lost revenue.

A key metric of hiring efficiency, time to hire is all about ensuring that the hiring team and processes are ready to fulfill recruitment needs on time to keep the wheels of business well-oiled.

Plan to succeed

Succeeding with timely hiring starts well before the need for a new hire arises. The hiring process should analyse hiring trends and requirement needs in the organisation to proactively anticipate fulfillment timelines.

• How long does it take to advertise for a vacant role? A
• re there clear processes, systems and tools to handle ‘high-churn’, ‘medium-churn’ and ‘low-churn’ requirements?
• Is the current hiring method the most efficient and relevant to the current market landscape?

How does it compare with competing organisations? Before planning to recruit, it is a good idea to get all relevant stakeholders together to work out a timeframe. Is there anyone who needs to be involved at every stage? Interviews will need to be scheduled according to planned milestones, feedback will need to be received on time and smart orchestration skills will have to be brought into play.

With a clear recruitment plan in place, here are some ‘dos’ and tips to help organisations succeed in reducing their time-to-hire.

The Job Description – Make it Succeed

The job description needs to look at prospective candidates as its customers. Does it give the most effective messaging regarding the organisation, the capabilities required and the role description? Will it fire up enthusiasm among the applicants? Will it send a clear message to help applicants decide whether or not they fit right?

The job description should:

• Be honest
• Be clear
• Bring alive the company culture with its creativity, tone and content

The Interview Process – Improve it

In a candidate driven market, the war for talent is always on. This means that organisations have to create a strong positive brand recall when they think of work. The onus of this lies with the HR.

A positive candidate experience is critical to the employer brand and also to the time to hire. As a custodian of employer brand, it’s important that HR creates a positive candidate experience.

While the hiring team needs to be understanding of the schedules of the people involved in the recruitment process, it is also important to educate them on running a time-bound effort. A slow hiring process may well turn the right candidates away and leave an organisation with pool of average candidates. It is equally important to ensure that you keep the candidate engaged from the time of the interview till the time they join.

Job advertising - modernise it

A digitally enabled recruitment system will sharpen and quicken the hiring process. It will also invite early – this could very well make interviewing more enthusing and less tedious, resulting in quicker decisions. Making the career site mobile-friendly will add to the efficiency and positive imaging. A candidate's social media profile could well provide pertinent details about them as individuals and as employees.