Today’s competitive and rapidly-changing employment landscape presents challenges for employers in attracting and retaining talent. In fact, according to Zywave’s 2022 Attraction and Retention Benchmarking Overview, finding and keeping great employees is considered one of the top-five problems by 75% of businesses surveyed.
Furthermore, employers indicate meeting operational demands and providing adequate resources to address talent needs (such as increasing the number of recruiters or establishing internal initiatives) as key staffing issues.
Operational efficiencies can help employers identify the right workers for their roles and address some of their most pressing challenges.
Time-to-hire is a metric that measures how quickly a company can select and hire a job candidate. It’s calculated by totaling the number of days that pass between the candidate applying for the role and getting hired as an employee. This is different from time-to-fill, which is a measure of how effective a company’s recruiting process is. Time-to-fill is calculated by counting the number of days that pass between a job getting approved and the offer being accepted by the candidate. Career website Zippia found that the average time-to-hire in 2021 was 42 days. Other resources reported similar findings, though time-to-hire averages can range anywhere from around 15 days to 60 days, depending on certain factors (e.g., industry).
Reducing time-to-hire can provide a competitive advantage by providing a superior overall employee experience. Having an efficient recruiting system can also help attract new talent to relevant positions. If your company could benefit by reducing time-to-hire, consider these five tips for making the process more efficient.
1. Identify your average time-to-hire
Knowing how long it typically takes you to hire an employee on average is an excellent place to start. This number will vary depending on the industry, department, and role, but it’s a good baseline to work with. After analyzing the present data, you might need to make some adjustments to take into consideration some unique scenarios such as seasonality.
2. Provide regular and transparent communication
If you want to retain talented employees, your company’s HR team needs to implement efficient best practices. This means being crystal clear about how many steps are involved in the hiring process and what the timelines look like. Otherwise, potential hires could be left frustrated and move on to another opportunity.
3. Evaluate your tools
You should always take time to consider which tools you have been using in your hiring process, and if they are truly helpful. In some cases, tools can end up causing more problems than they are trying to address. For example, if you find that you’re spending a lot of extra time screening potential employees, it might be wiser to invest in technology that will help conduct screenings more quickly requiring less input from a member of your team..
4. Automate routine HR functions
The hiring process might be time-consuming, but it’s crucial to not skip steps. As your team grows, it may become difficult for your HR department to handle hiring alone. Automating routine onboarding emails, for example, can free up time as well as maintain consistency for the best employee experience.
5. Review your job descriptions
If job descriptions are not constantly evaluated, the skills and experiences necessary for the positions may become irrelevant. To avoid this, talk to the managers of each department about what they need in their employees. This way, you can adjust job postings accordingly and bring in stronger candidates who will last longer. Finding qualified candidates for the current role needing to be filled, will likely speed up the time-to-hire process too because you’ll have applicants who know what you are looking for.
Every workplace has a unique process for hiring and recruiting, but it’s important for all companies seeking efficiencies to reduce their time-to-hire. After all, streamlining this process can provide your company with an edge to succeed in today’s challenging labor market.