Does your hiring process speed time to top talent?

"How can we speed our hiring process so that we don’t lose out to top talent?" This is a question Agile is asked about quite a lot – especially in the last few months. We blog about this subject frequently and we even wrote a white paper recently that provides four winning talent strategies for hiring in the New IT. Not to sound like a broken record, but in today’s environment recruiting top IT talent with high demand skills is challenging – for both technical recruiters and IT organizations. But Agile knows how to speed your time to talent – it’s our tag line for goodness sake! We’d like to share some tips on how your company can speed time to top talent by speeding your hiring process.

Improve/update job descriptions. As recruiters, we find that inaccurate, incomplete job descriptions can be a major obstacle in identifying and recruiting the most qualified candidates. Based on the job description, we’ll submit seemingly qualified candidates to the client, only to find out later (days or even weeks) that the skills/responsibilities outlined in the job description aren’t really what the position entails. It’s during this time that we could have found the perfect candidate if the job description had been more accurate. It’s also during this time that top talent is lost to other companies. Before recruitment of a position begins, make sure the job description reflects EXACTLY what kind of candidate is required to fill the role.
Conduct a review of your hiring process. The IT employment market is NOT what it was a year ago. Changes in your hiring process are most likely necessary. For example, a major computer firm found this out when it examined the number of superstar candidates it was hiring. When they found the number of star hires to be unacceptably low they identified an astonishing fact. Superstars are only on the market for a brief time (usually less than two weeks and sometimes as little as a day). The firms hiring process was so slow that by the time a decision could be made the star candidates were lost to the faster moving competitors and only above average candidates were left to choose from. There are many strategies and methodologies that can be implemented such as Six Sigma that will help establish a clear understanding of your hiring process. This includes reviewing how long it takes to go from step one to step two and so on. After reviewing how much time it takes to get things done, compare it to some benchmarks. At this point, you will probably uncover some significant bottlenecks in the process. The next step is to establish clear goals for how long each step in the process should take, and if possible, tie the process to performance (i.e. performance reviews and bonuses).
Make sure the right people are involved in the hiring decision. Although this should be included as part of the hiring process (see above), we think it’s important to call this out separately because the people involved in the decision-making can greatly impact the speed of hiring. Our experience shows that when the right person/people is involved during the hiring process (i.e. the hiring manager has the authority to make the decision and offer), the process moves forward much more quickly. When too many people are involved (especially when the position is not high-profile), the process can become stifled – and that’s when candidates decide to move on. There is also the problem with who owns the recruiting process. Ultimately, the hiring manager should be accountable for the hire, and this has to be one of his/her top priorities. Most managers have full schedules and struggle to find time to interview/hire new team members. It’s important for them to make time and treat interviews the same as a critical client meeting. If the accountability is not there, then recruiting/staffing does not become a priority, and the time frame for decisions is pushed back further.
Speed time of offer. Studies have found that job offer timing can impact overall job acceptance. Research has concluded that job seekers are more likely to accept employment offers made earlier in the company’s hiring process than later – the highest quality job candidates are available for less than five days! Therefore, when you find the right person for the job, extend the offer as soon as possible versus waiting to see if a better candidate comes along. IT organizations that lack flexible and speedy hiring processes risk losing job candidates to those organizations that are able to identify top talent quickly and have the agility to present the offer early in the process. Jeff Furst’s article “Are You Fast and Accurate? Quality of Hire and Recruiting Speed -- ...” provides a practical model on how organizations can automate the candidate selection process.

The number of hires that are lost due to dinosaur hiring practices is becoming an increasingly critical problem for IT organizations. Increasing your speed of hire will get you higher quality hires. Remember, most great candidates are on the market for days not weeks. If your company can't make a speed hire, the likelihood of finding top talent will continue to diminish.

Comment by Valentino Martinez on March 13, 2011 at 1:41am: Jon,

I totally agree that speed-to-hire is critical when the window of opportunity to land a top quality candidate hangs in the balance. I can’t tell you how many great candidates evaporated over the many years I’ve been in the recruitment business due to non-speed-to-hire processes I’ve seen played out, sometimes for the dumbest reasons.

During the early and mid-‘80s, “speed-to-hire” was in its heyday when defense and aerospace recruiting required thousands of engineering and production professionals to be hired into a broad array of programs, e.g., the B-1B & Stealth B-2 Bomber Programs; Fighter Jet Programs, the C-130 Gunship Program; the Space Program; and programs so classified that if I told you about them I’d have to have you whacked. With no less than eleven major companies competing for the exact same engineering disciplines—speed-to-hire defined success or failure in acquiring accomplished, high potential individuals.

Points #3 & #4 are of particular importance in making this happen. Working on a team that hired a record 5,421 professionals (Engineers, Programmers, Production & Manufacturing, QA, Purchasing, Logistics, Finance, etc.) within a twelve month period was made possible by holding numerous on and offsite job fairs--locally and in all cities where major aerospace companies were headquartered. We refined and perfected the job offer process down to “on the spot” hire decisions based on my pre-screen interview recommendations which were endorsed by two senior managers who concurred with my evaluations after their interviews and approved my extending on-the-spot “contingent” job offers (contingent on getting a final approved offer and passing drug and medical screens).

Contingent job offers were made formal within a 1-2 week period which essentially put us two weeks ahead of our competition going after the same candidates. By the time our competitors extended job offers to candidates we mutually pursued—they, the competition, discovered we had already wrapped them up with job offer—acceptance—background check; passed drug & medical screens. Our new hires were so impressed with our job offer decision style that word-of-mouth traveled far and wide and actually attracted passive candidates who saw our recruitment ads and came forward knowing they would get an immediate go or no-go hire decision from us. So having the right people in the speed-to-hire selection process made it happen for us. The team knows what they’re looking for and know it when they see the right candidates.

The exception to speed-to-hire process, in my view, is in the college interview process. I say this because if you have 20-30 jobs available and you’re going to 10-12 colleges you do not want to make hasty decision without looking at the entire candidate mix which can only be done after the on-campus recruitment schedule is completed. Making a hire decision too early in the schedule may discount truly outstanding candidates who appear at the tail end of the schedule. And most college placement offices will not allow you to pressure students to accept a job too early in the college recruitment season.