The candidate market has changed fundamentally - and so has the recruitment process. Social megatrends such as Gen Z, New Work and, in particular, the demographically induced shortage of specialists and managers have turned recruiting into an application process for employers.
Today, the company has become the applicant.
Candidates still can't usually "choose" their position, as some observers claim. However, they are in a much better situation than they were a few years ago.
The duration of the recruiting process is crucial
The primary goal of recruiting is to find suitable candidates who fit the position.
But if it is true that the company has become the applicant, then the duration of the recruiting process becomes crucial. This is because the tools that can be used to reduce the time-to-hire almost inevitably lead to further improvements and optimize the process as a whole.
A short time-to-hire
- minimizes losses (due to feedback) and
- leads to a better process (because of the "candidate experience")
- as well as to more cost-effective processes (because vacancy costs are reduced).
Investing in recruitment for the long term
The latter, the vacancy costs: Incidentally, vacancy costs, the cost of vacancy, are also often underestimated. It is always astonishing how much time some companies allow themselves when filling vacancies - as if the company would save costs on balance as a result of the vacancy.
If this were the case, the position would have to be abolished immediately.
And yet recruitment is not primarily about cost reduction. Because while recruitment costs are one-off costs, filling the vacant position should deliver a long-term return. (If the ROI is to be in the black: at least three years!)
But how do you reduce the duration of recruitment processes to a minimum? Read my suggestions here:
1. make each recruiting process a separate project.
The old "post & pray", where the company simply places a job advertisement and then waits for applicants, is gone forever. In the VUCA world, recruiting has also become much more complex.
Companies need a suitable strategy
This means that every recruiting process should be seen as a project, at the start of which it is important to think very carefully about which strategy suits which vacancy, so
- that it fits,
- quickly and
- inexpensively
as possible (and in that order!).
In order to develop a strategy, recruiters must of course rely on experience. But they also need a good feel for the expectations of the candidates.
2. Use the entire range of possible recruitment channels.
The choice of recruitment channel, i.e. the way in which the candidates are to be found, is also particularly important here. This must also be decided anew each time. Which channels come into question depends heavily on the vacant position:
- A Head of Product Management can certainly be found via LinkedIn if you take the right and targeted approach.
- You can find an employee for production or a truck driver on Facebook.
- And there are managing directors who got their top job via a speculative application.
In all three cases, the search costs were zero euros. It doesn't always have to be a headhunter. And the good old job advertisement is far from dead.
CRM also works for candidate management
CRM-oriented candidate management can save considerable costs and effort. Some companies keep in touch with valuable former employees or candidates who made a promising impression in a recruitment process but did not get the job for a reason that is not related to their qualifications or who turned themselves down.
3. Streamline your recruitment process
To optimize the recruitment process can mean two things:
- improving the quality of the process
- shortening the process by reducing the number of individual process steps.
Even if it may not seem so at first glance, the two goals are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary: the shorter process is often even the better one. This is because a lengthy recruiting process often leads to the loss of the very candidates who would have been the most suitable and suitable... What a shame!
A first short video interview with the hiring manager after just a few days, a detailed personal interview that is designed as an exchange and dialog, and a third round in which the candidates also get to know future colleagues, their workplace and their future job - that's it.
A smart personnel diagnostic can be inserted between the second and third round if necessary - without losing any time. Or the third appointment can be enriched with a small presentation task for the candidates.
But "a lot helps a lot" no longer applies in recruiting. A lean process is essential for an acceptable time-to-hire.
4. Standardize your recruitment process.
Companies would do well to standardize their recruitment processes. Despite all the flexibility that remains essential in recruiting, a recruiting process cannot be successful without discipline, i.e. achieving the three goals of fit, duration and cost mentioned at the beginning.
On the one hand, standardization results in key figures that can be used to check when the schedule is getting out of hand and you should take countermeasures. Secondly, it enables effective controlling: because only if these processes are binding for everyone involved - for the HR business partners and, above all, for the hiring managers who have to fill a vacancy - can their quality, speed and efficiency be monitored and controlled.
And if the schedule gets out of hand: Take appropriate countermeasures. The same applies to recruiting: no project without a good process!
Limit the time-to-hire
The first step: the relationship between fit and time-to-hire can be determined in the course of standardization. Time and again, fit proves to be the most important factor when filling a position. With suitable candidates, ghosting, quiet quitting and early turnover on both sides can be avoided in the best possible way.
In this respect, the quality targets set limits to the time-to-hire: Time-to-hire can be optimized to the extent that this is not at the expense of quality. Shortening it must not be at the expense of quality.
Determining the duration of the recruitment process
The second step is to define the time-to-hire within which the candidate search should be successfully completed for each recruitment process. Incidentally, this standardized duration of the recruitment process is often confused with the time-to-fill, i.e. the duration of the vacancy. This is longer than the duration of the search because new employees usually have to serve a notice period with their current employer before they can start.
The average time-to-hire is 13 weeks. It is important to undercut this value.
Planning the time-to-hire
The third step is to plan the specified time-to-hire precisely:
- Which step happens when?
- How soon after the start of the process must all parameters be clarified in the briefing between HR and the hiring manager in order to be able to go to market?
- How quickly should candidate profiles be available?
- When do the first interviews take place, when is the second round, when is the decision made?
- How many rounds of interviews will there be? What do they look like?
5. Put the applicants at the center.
Standards, key figures and discipline are good, but - as long as the process does not put the applicants at the center - they are only secondary virtues in recruitment. As already mentioned: quality is more important than the speed of recruitment, because it is no use to anyone if a vacancy is filled within a few days but is completely unsuitable.
The candidate journey is a unique selling point
Other than that, speed is a key factor in recruiting. Ten years ago, it could take four long weeks for candidates to receive a response for the first time. This may be a thing of the past in times of digital applicant management systems that automatically and immediately send a confirmation of receipt.
But what happens then? How quickly does the company really get back to you and cancel or invite you to get to know them? And if it invites you: in what form? With an impersonal message ("Dear Mr/Ms...") and possibly with a fixed "appointment" for a "job interview"?
The so-called Candidate Journey makes all the difference!
The company is the enquirer
The employer brand perceived by the candidate (for less well-known companies, for example, the "ratings" on relevant platforms such as kununu) or practical aspects such as the convenient location of the workplace or similar may decide whether a candidate applies - but that's it.
What happens next is often decisive when choosing between two roughly equivalent offers. Quick, reliable and friendly communication before, during and after the interviews with Human Resources and the hiring manager are an expression of appreciation and are many times more valuable to candidates than the best employer value proposition.
The talents are the suppliers of skills and potential, the company is the demander!
6. And what about the costs?
There has hardly been any talk of recruiting costs. Yet cost-per-hire is another elementary key figure of every recruiting process. Here too, a well thought-out strategy based on time-to-hire pays off. This means that exactly those search costs are spent that are really necessary, no more, but also no less! An expensive headhunter is no guarantee of a perfect fit, nor of speed. But saving money at the wrong end can be just as wrong.
A strategy like this minimizes the necessary investments because, by definition, it does not waste money on less promising recruitment methods.
Conclusion: Fast recruitment processes are essential for modern talent acquisition
Time-to-hire is now one of the most important key figures for the recruitment process because everything in recruitment has to happen faster than before. Companies can no longer afford bureaucratic decision-making processes regarding who to invite for an "interview" - and certainly no arrogance in the sense of "The young lady (m/f/d) should be patient for a while".
In my experience, the most important measures to speed up the recruitment process are the following:
- Use all recruitment channels where possible - depending on the vacancy, for example, unsolicited applications or social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Simplify the candidate search and selection process and limit it to a minimum number of steps.
- Standardize the recruitment process and make it binding for all parties involved.
- Focus on the candidate journey.
Fit remains the most important thing
And yet you must not forget: Before speed comes - by a nose - "fit". This does not mean that only the ideal fit would be an option. Companies need to move away from the "man (m/f/d) who can do everything": there are too many "B" employers who demand "A" candidates.
But time pressure must not be allowed to lead to embarrassing solutions either.
Strategic talent acquisition is the most important task
Operational recruitment has long since become strategic talent acquisition and perhaps the most important task in human resource management. It cannot be taken seriously enough. Because no personnel development can ever fix what has been done wrong here. Good employees can be developed into very good ones, but mediocre ones cannot be developed into good ones.
