Recruit, Screen, Hire and Repeat?

How many screening methods does your organization use during the hiring process? Perhaps you use just the standard resume, one or two interviews and references check or perhaps you use a whole lot more.

22.1 Days to Hire In Canada

Recently Glassdoor released a report on hiring time lines which demonstrated that hiring times in North America are edging up partially as a result of the addition of more screening tools during the interview process.

When Glassdoor compared interview timelines between 6 countries, Canada, the US, France, The UK, Australia and Germany they found that Canada had the shortest interview times at 22.1 days, whch was very similar to the US at 22.9, Australia was next at 27.9, the UK was 28.6, Germany 28.8 and France the longest at 31.9.  However, over the past few years the hiring times of the US and Canada have increased, France has levelled out while the times of the other 3 countries have decreased.

Looking at some of the screening tools organizations are using during the interview process Glassdoor found that these 8 screening tools were adding between less then one day to as much as 8.2 days or more to the hiring process.

The addition of a phone interview combined with the traditional one-on-one interview can add between 10.9 and 13.5 days to the hiring process on top of whatever time it has taken to create the job description, advertise, recruit, gather and review resumes and set up the interview process.  10-13 days to a job offer may seem reasonable, but when you add recruitment and delay in job start hiring can take weeks.

There can be value gained through each of these screening methods if you do them well, know what you are looking for and know how to find it. If not then the time and energy you spend on these layers of hiring will produce mixed results.

Elements of the Hiring Timeline

Hiring is sometimes a straight line from a need you know is upcoming with the job description ready to go and a few candidates already have in mind. Other times hiring is a twisting road that includes an unexpected departure or struggling team with an unclear job description and no candidates in the pipeline.  Taking to long to hire a candidate can leave a gap in your organization, strain your existing resources and even cost you money if you cannot meet a business needs. Yet, hiring too quickly without checks and balances can also cost you time, resources and money.  How can you find the right mix of hiring activities to ensure you hire the right person within a reasonable time line? There are a few options you can consider if you want to stay on top of your recruitment game.

Recruitment Trends

In their 2015 Report ‘The Global Trends Shaping Recruiting in 2015’ LinkedIn gathered data from 4000 recruiting leaders. You may have guessed that the recruiters LinkedIn tapped into demonstrated a proclivity to using social channels for promoting their brand to future talent. General social media  as a method of communication fell just below ‘Word of Mouth’, 47% and 49% respectively but both fell below social professional networks, 61% and Company websites 76%. These methods of recruiting are designed to help you have a constant flow of potential talent in your pipeline though you still need to be effective in defining and attracting the talent you want to attract.

When asked about what methods have produced their top quality hires in the past 4 years recruiters told LinkedIn that ‘Social professional networks’ were second to Internet job boards at 38% and 42% respectively. However, their view of the value of Social professional networks had skyrocketed by a 73% increase in those 4 years. Other methods of top quality hires included employee referrals at 33% (down by 14%), staffing agencies (down by 16%), the companies career website at 30% (up by 4%) and internal hires at 29% (down 5%).

Finding a Balance

Hiring the right candidate is a high-pressure job. Deciding where to spend your time and resources can be made more effective if you are able to discover what recruiting and hiring methods work best for the different roles within your organization because, as is often the case, a one size fits all approach frequently brings mediocre results.

The key to effective hiring is to begin by knowing the qualifications, skills and personal qualities that will be a good match for the job, the team and the organization and then find ways to discover those elements in candidates.

Take some time to look at the hiring methods you are using and track which ones apply to which hires and then track which hires have performed the best and stayed as long as you wanted them to. You may find you can cut own your hiring time by reducing methods that do not add much value or add another step that you discover works well.