‘57 per cent of job seekers lose interest if the hiring process takes too long.’
An efficient hiring process supported with good quality recruitment data enables one’s business to make better hiring decisions. For most organisations, streamlining the hiring process begins with monitoring their recruitment metrics to identify potential areas for improvement. But if you are not familiar with managing data in your recruitment, you can be left feeling a little in the dark. Especially when it comes to making improvements in your hiring process. The hiring, or the recruitment process, includes making the decision to appoint a new employee, deciding what skills and experience an employee will need, recruiting for the position, selecting an employee, onboarding, and new staff training.
Now that we have mentioned ‘recruitment metrics’, the next logical step is to discuss what they are. Recruitment metrics are data points collected at key stages in your recruitment process. Some popular recruitment metrics include time to hire, candidate conversion rate, proceed rates, and interviews to hires ratio. The next step is, obviously, how monitoring your recruitment metrics will help your organisation to streamline your recruitment or hiring process in the long run. Streamlining your recruitment process is, after all, important from an efficiency perspective. So, the following are the recruitment metrics you need to monitor and improve on to streamline your recruitment process.
1. Time to hire
Also referred to as time to fill, time to hire is measured by how long your job posts are left unfilled. As per certain researches conducted by CV Library, Recruitee, etcetera, 57% of job seekers lose interest if the hiring process takes too long, so reducing this recruitment metric should be a priority. A lengthy application form alone can lose up to 90% of the qualified candidates reviewing your job posts. Prolonging the interview process with multiple phases also adds to the frustration among the candidates in your pipeline.
Time to hire can be reduced and improved on by offering a one-click submit application form, carrying out effective pre-employment screening to ensure the candidates you see are the best fit for your vacancy, fast-tracking highly qualified applicants and employee referrals by tagging them through your ATS, structure your interview process accordingly and making a prompt job offer to your preferred candidate.
2. Making your job offer
Once you are ready to offer someone the job, it is still important to monitor your time to hire. After all, the decision-making process can take up time and your candidate may receive a counteroffer from their existing employer; or even get snapped up by someone else.
For this reason, you should try and have a rough deadline in mind for when you want to reach your decision by. Make sure you know what their notice period is and keep in communication with them throughout the process. Previous research has revealed that a staggering 97.1% of job hunters are more likely to accept a job offer if they have a positive hiring experience. When it comes to their acceptance, make sure you give them a deadline to formally respond to your written offer. One to two days should be more than enough, but as mentioned above, be respectful of the fact that they might receive a counteroffer.
3. Make the most of the tech
The internet has expanded the talent pool, which means you have more potential candidates to recruit from. It can also make identifying the right candidate a more difficult task. Luckily, there are software programs and tools that let you filter large databases of candidates. This could make it easier to identify people based on their previous experience, education level, and other factors that may be important when it comes to hiring a new employee.
This not only helps you to find candidates with the right skills, but it may also make it easier to identify those that will fit well in your company culture. Of course, it can take a little while to figure out what tech will enhance your recruiting process the most, but this initial time investment will pay dividends in the long run.
The last and final step is to pass the hiring process. Once you have streamlined the right procedure that works for your company, make sure you train others in the basic principles and best practices. This means that you do not have to rely on only one to two team members to interview new candidates but have a team of people to do it on your behalf.
ABL Recruitment team
