8 effective ways to reduce the time to hire
While an open position is an opportunity for job seekers, it sometimes becomes a nightmare for HR teams, especially when the time to hire gets extended for no apparent reason. To be fair, there are reasons behind that but it becomes hard to point them with all the built-up pressure and rush to meet deadlines, which often leads to bad hires.
So how to avoid this scenario, the nightmare! The best way is to increase efficiency and reduce the time to hire while maintaining quality.
Reducing the time to hire while making all the right decisions is not that much of a challenge if you have the right tool by your side and adhere to some standard yet highly effective practices.
That’s why this blog will focus on 8 ways to reduce the time to hire and enhance your recruitment process tenfold.
1. Establish and follow a structured recruitment process
If you start from scratch every time you want to make a hire, the time to hire will always be going to extend if anything. What we mean by that is to have a pre-planned, well-structured algorithm in place and make necessary tweaks as required by each role.
For instance, the recruitment process for every role follows a standard procedure which usually includes steps such as:
These are the common steps shared by every role and you can always save a lot of time on these checkpoints. You can also go for automation to level up your HR practices.
2. Build a talent database and keep it updated
When you decide on a certain open position, don’t let the time you invested in screening other candidates go down the drain. Instead, make a record of other qualified candidates who didn’t make it to the said job opening but could prove to be well-suited for other recurring vacancies.
The practice of keeping an updated talent database can significantly reduce the time to hire and double the hiring efficiency. Also, with the remote working culture being a typical approach, you can expand your pool out of geographical constraints including the remote workforce.
3. Keep a talent pipeline ready in advance
It’s just like planning an office surprise party. You keep everything ready in advance, and when the time comes, all you need to do is yell “surprise!”
Putting in formal words, building a talent pipeline means keeping track of a candidate or a group of candidates pre-screened for a certain role. So when the time comes to make a hire, there’s no need to advertise or spend time waiting for the applications to roll. You can directly skip to the parts that are directly in your hands, like screening and filtering.
Are you wondering what if my company deals in volume hiring?
Again, automation to the rescue. Software such as Zapilio Volume Hiring can save loads of resources, time, and the hassle of manually assessing thousands of applicants with powerful AI and true automation.
4. Appearance matters, make the front end of your career page count!
Qualified or rather talented candidates come with certain expectations. And they are most likely to visit the company’s career page and other social profiles to find out if the company aligns with their expectations or not. So keep your company’s front end including but not limited to the career page, LI profile, etc., compelling, and full of relevant info.
Potential hires may drop out or reject the offer, if they find such important pages unattended or not maintained, resulting in an extended time to hire.
5. Always create job listings that are compelling and on-point
Whenever you’re advertising and want to attract talent for a vacancy, make sure to follow some basic points:
- Rule out the guessing game and provide enough accurate information
- The job listing should be on-point, concise, and easy to review
- Don’t create false expectations or include unnecessary details
- Be straightforward about the requirements and qualifications
- Be honest and don’t try to deter applicants about the job scope
- Include a brief about daily tasks and overall job responsibilities under job information.
- Emphasize the additional benefits, bonuses, and perks offered by your company
- Include future scopes and paths to advancement through the opening.
These basic points will help you create a compelling job listing and attract only qualified candidates. This will eliminate non-required applicants from the very initial stage of hiring, thus directly reducing your time to hire.
6. Deploy and leverage advanced ATS
Engaging with an advanced Application Tracking System (ATS) is not an expenditure but an investment. A rather good one given the resources and time consumed by the manual hiring process.
Advanced ATS software can automate the whole recruitment process and help in tracking the applicants and turnaround time better.
Yes, you can use a spreadsheet, but what about the dedicated workforce and potential human errors? Automation streamlines everything, increases efficiency, and reduces errors down to negligible throughout the hiring process.
It can help you enhance the hiring structure, help you easily identify bottlenecks by evaluating each touchpoint, keep every relevant entity in the loop, and more. Remember to properly frame your needs and expectations from an ATS before committing to a particular system.
7. Use AI-powered accurate assessment software for screening processes
Companies save hundreds of thousands of hours using advanced assessment software such as Zapilio. They include cognitive ability assessments, personality questionnaires & skill tests to help companies make the right decision on the first attempt.
Not only does the assessment software reduce the time to create and implement tests, but they also improve the quality of hire while minimalizing the chances of potential human error.
8. Keep everyone in the loop and avoid opinion mismatch
Assessment software like Zapilio comes with easy collaboration capabilities to keep everyone notified in real time and allow the relevant authority to check the status of any applicant at any given time.
The relevance of this feature in reducing the time to hire is today’s job candidates require and expects timely communication, especially the qualified ones. Leveraging these kinds of software helps you provide timely updates throughout the hiring journey.
It also helps improve collaboration with hiring managers and higher authorities who want to be directly involved in the process but practically can’t when it’s all manual as they always have a lot on their plates.
Leveraging collaboration tools will help you in keeping them informed at every point and take direct participation whenever they feel like it. The practice will make higher authorities leverage instead of a bottleneck in the process of hiring thus reducing the time to hire or turnaround time.
Conclusion
You can enhance the hiring process by making certain changes to your manual practices, but when you bring technology like AI into the film, the results become unparalleled.
Don’t let the top talent just choose other companies and offers over yours. Be one step ahead and don’t think twice before introducing technology to enhance the recruitment drills.
Make compelling listings, and invest the saved time to polish benefits and other perks so you never let go of another candidate. Always make the top pick and see the turnaround time cut by over 90%, visit this page to know more!
