Let’s optimize your time-to-hire
If you want to be a contender in today’s hyper-competitive and skills-focused job market, then it’s time to get smart and take a look at how you optimize time-to-hire. Time-to-hire measures the time between first contact (either sourcing or application) and an accepted job offer. The faster you are at getting that signature, the less time the candidate has to receive, review, and accept competing offers, and the sooner you have a new employee up, running, and productive.
So what are the best practices for strategically optimizing time-to-hire, and how do you improve the way your organization tracks time spent during the hiring process?
We’ve got five steps to help get you started:
1. Evaluate your current workforce.
What are the top performance metrics and skill sets needed for an employee to be successful? Use those as a baseline for ideal qualities and skill requirements for your prospective hire.
2. Build a marketing program for talent outreach.
This can include social blasts, email campaigns, and featured postings on different job sites. Don’t be afraid to work with external recruiting partners here. They’ll be able to help you maximise the potential workforce available for each of the roles you need to fill.
3. Develop a framework for vetting applicants.
Prioritize and place applicants in a candidate pipeline. You can do this based on goals, cultural/ organizational alignment, skill sets, and more. Your company’s structure and culture has a major impact on this, so try to build your pipeline accordingly.
- For example: Company A values driven employees that are a natural cultural fit, and they’re more than willing to provide new hires with the training they need to be successful. They wouldn’t want to prioritize their pipeline based solely on skill-sets. They’d want to base it on goals and cultural alignment.
4. Train your team.
Create a series of training sessions that aim to empower hiring managers and associated team members to make hiring decisions based on information about candidates, the applicant market, and the needs of the organization.
5. Monitor and analyze applicant tracking system (ATS) data.
Pay close attention to the correlation between the length of each phase of the hiring process vs candidate engagement. Do you notice any significant changes across the board? What happens when you apply the filter to your top three choices? Keep tabs on current and past applicants to refine best practices for each phase of the hiring process.
These five steps will help bring you back to basics. Take a close look at who you want to hire, reach out and hit them where they’re looking for you, make sure your vetting process sets you both up for a successful start with your company, and learn from your past actions. I promise, it’s worth the effort. A study by Aberdeen shows that organizations that invest in recruitment marketing, talent branding, and applicant tracking are typically:
- 2 times more likely to have lower cost-per-hire
- 28% more likely to fill a position in ½ the time
- 2 times more likely to have more than ½ of their candidates identify as “highly engaged”
Highly engaged employees are happy employees. And happy employees are less likely to leave you for a shiny new offer at another organization.
Keep in mind though, employee engagement can’t end at the offer. You need to provide a cohesive experience from the onboarding process, to internal mobility and beyond!
