If you’re involved in hiring people, you know the market has changed. You can feel the heightened pressure to find and secure your candidate of choice. You may even have missed out on people you really wanted to hire because another company acted more quickly.
There was a time when a sense of urgency in hiring wasn’t as important. No matter how many steps there were in the process or how long they took, candidates would wait. There was good in this, and also bad. On the upside, companies with positions to fill had their pick of candidates, and they could take their time to make a decision. There was a downside to this as well. Some companies began treating candidates – their time, and their share of the decision – with very little respect. Not maliciously, of course, that was just an inevitable outcome of the power imbalance. Companies that treat candidates that way in today’s market will not be successful in hiring them.
Given the high cost of a bad hire, hiring someone is a very important decision for any company, and also for the prospective employee. So this isn’t to suggest that decisions in the hiring process should be rushed or hasty. It just means that smart companies don’t delay or slow the process unnecessarily.
It begins with a hiring strategy that is designed to be as efficient as possible. Who really needs to be involved, and who doesn’t? Can you hold panel interviews, rather than separate interviews with several people? If that’s not the best approach in your situation, can you schedule successive interviews over a single block of time, so the candidate only makes one trip in? Could some in-person interviews be replaced by more convenient virtual ones?
Once the hiring process is defined, outline that process for the people you expect to progress further. When unforeseen changes happen (as they often do), let candidates know as promptly as you can. In my experience, most people are willing to accommodate any reasonable number of steps and length of time in a hiring process, they just want to know what those steps are. You have everything to gain by being transparent.
As an employer, when a decision has been made to offer someone the position, make the offer. That sounds patently obvious, but a surprising number of companies drag their heels at this stage. Usually, this is because it hasn’t been clearly defined who is ultimately responsible for making the go/no-go decision, and what the criteria are for a ‘yes’. Those are important factors to clarify when you’re designing your process.
One closing note: there is a window of opportunity between the acceptance of an offer and the start date, and that opportunity is often overlooked. Naturally, a hiring company should respect their new employee’s commitment of time as they wrap things up with their soon-to-be-former employer during a working notice period. But touching base once or twice during this time can be an opportunity to begin the onboarding process. Extend a friendly welcome, let the candidate know that the company and their team are looking forward to having them join. Anticipate some of the questions that the new employee might have about their first day, and answer those questions to lessen any first-day jitters and keep anticipation high.
The days in which companies held all the cards in the recruitment process are gone (at least for now). Companies that are streamlined and transparent in the way they select and hire new employees will win. Embrace the opportunity to make your hiring process as efficient as it can be.
