If Time is Money, How Can You Speed Up Your Next Hire?

Imagine this: a key position in your team has been vacant for weeks, and the clock is ticking. Deadlines are slipping, your team is stretched thin, and productivity is taking a nosedive. Every day that role remains unfilled, you’re not just losing time—you’re losing money. Recruitment costs are mounting, and the pressure to find the right candidate quickly is intense.

So, how do you break the cycle? How can you accelerate your hiring process without compromising on quality and risking the dreaded bad hire?

We’ve got you covered. Here are 6 actionable tips to help you streamline your hiring process, reduce downtime, and secure top talent swiftly. Let’s dive in and revamp your hiring strategy to get your team back on track.

6 tips to improve your hiring speed

1. Define the role clearly

Have you ever started on a project only to realize halfway through you’re missing key pieces of information? The same thing happens when you rush to hire without a solid understanding of what you’re looking for. The problem gets even more tricky when you have multiple voices involved in the hiring decision. So how can you get everyone on the same page?

First, write a job description that is clear and concise. Reusing old job posts or adding more and more information until the post is a lengthy read will not help you find great talent. Instead, make sure you have a crystal-clear understanding of what the role is and what skills are needed to succeed within it. A well-defined job description can attract the right candidates from the very start.

Second, think about the person who will bring your role to life. Look beyond the hard skills you’ll find on a resume and consider the soft skills and personality needed to do well in your environment. What traits should a successful candidate have? Benchmarks can be a helpful way to articulate your hiring wish list and gain consensus about what type of person you want to hire. Once you have a clear idea of who you are looking for, it will be much easier to find them in the busy talent landscape.

2. Streamline your application process

Nothing turns off top talent faster than a time-consuming application process. We’ve all heard the hiring horror stories about uploading a resume only to be asked to type out all the information anyway. Don’t be that company. You value your time, so extend the same courtesy to candidates.

How can you make your process more user-friendly? Start by spending some time eliminating any redundancies or unnecessary information gathering. What do you really need to know upfront and what can be better left to the interview? Then review the application page itself. Is it easy for candidates to figure out how to apply? Does the application experience work well for both desktop and mobile users? Once you have that covered, think about the interview process itself. If you typically have multiple rounds of interviews, consider condensing some into panel interviews to save on time.

Read More: Check out these tips to help you win the talent wars

3. Make the most of technology

Technology can help you speed up your hiring process if you use it wisely. When you know you’ll be inundated with resumes, consider using an ATS to help you sift through the pile. Video interviews can also be used to help you meet more candidates in a shorter timeframe. And ever consider using a chatbot while hiring? They can save time by engaging with candidates on career websites, answering frequently asked questions, and even providing updates.

This is also where assessments come into play. When time is short, assessments help cut to the heart of who a candidate is, what competencies they’d bring with them to a role, and how they might fit into the current team. There’s also the added benefit of leveling the playing field for all candidates. By relying on data, rather than instinct, you can better standardize your hiring process from what interview questions to ask, to what areas to probe more deeply. Going with your gut might be tempting, but it doesn’t lead to the strongest hires. When in doubt, use data.

4. Interview wisely

The time you have with a candidate is a limited commodity. Don’t waste the opportunity with an impossible list of questions or a “just wing it” attitude. Structured interviews are the standard for finding quality hires for a reason. What does that mean? With a structured interview, a predetermined list of questions is asked to candidates in the same order by the same interviewer. Their responses are graded according to a matrix the company decides on prior to starting the interviews. Adding this layer of structure to the process helps decrease bias, avoids rambling conversations, and ensures interviewers get the insights they need to inform their final decision.

Tools like the McQuaig Word Survey can help identify what key questions should make it into your interview plan. It can also help flag any potential areas of strength or weakness an interviewer can delve into further. Using assessments in the hiring process helps interviewers make decisions based on facts to improve your chances of hiring the best fit for the role.

5. Communicate in a timely manner

No one loves the candidate black hole. It’s rude, it’s insulting, and it leaves candidates with nothing good to say about your company. In our interconnected world, poor communication can damage the employer brand if candidates vent their frustrations on social media or employment sites like Glassdoor. Instead of long delays or simply disappearing on candidates like a puff of smoke, bring some structure to your communication process.

A candidate communication strategy should plan out when in the hiring process you’ll be updating candidates and how. Usually this starts with an email acknowledgement when an application is submitted. An email between each interview rounds is polite and once the interviews are over, don’t let communication lag more than 10 days without an update. Monster recently identified poor communication as the #1 reason candidates voluntarily drop out of the hiring process. With so much riding on communication, don’t skimp on those candidate emails.

Read More: What benefits can assessments bring to your hiring strategy?

6. Review and reset

Once you make your hiring decision, it's case closed, right? Not so fast. You’re missing out on some important insights if you end your hiring strategy here. Feedback is a crucial step to ensuring your hiring process stays healthy long-term. After each hiring cycle, gather insights from everyone involved in the process, including hiring managers, interviewers, and candidates. Use this feedback to identify bottlenecks in your process and areas for improvement. Candidate feedback can be invaluable to better understanding why great talent drops from your process or turns down a role. Remember, continuously refining your hiring process can lead to faster, better hires over time.

Speed doesn’t have to mean inefficiency

Speeding up your hiring process doesn’t mean cutting corners or sacrificing quality. By implementing these simple strategies, you can make your next hire faster while still ensuring you’re bringing the best talent into your organization. Remember, time is money, but investing a little of it in your hiring process can pay off in the long run.