Organisations are being told to look at ways to make their hiring processes more efficient to adapt to the changing economic reality. With so many specialist roles evolving within the Marketing and eCommerce sector, the demand for talent continues to soar.

When we come across exceptional candidates and present their CVs for roles we’re covering, it’s inevitably a race to see which hiring manager reacts and moves quickly enough through the hiring process to snap up the candidate. The time from application to job offer currently averages around 45 days when using a career site, with in-demand candidates becoming unavailable within 7-10 days of submitting their CVs across the board.

Read our guide: How to hire the right talent at the right time.

How to speed up the hiring process

Make your role advertisement as niche as possible

Rather than casting a wide net and accepting hundreds of CVs from multiple sources and sectors, take a more methodical approach by knowing exactly what you are looking for. Utilise the more niche recruitment consultants, social networking sites and forums that let you get in front of the key professionals you need to fill the position.

Ask yourself what your ultimate goal is to start with — do you want to find the best candidate, or are you just trying to weed out the bad ones to find one that will do?

This is of course dependent on the amount of hires you need to make and what type of position you’re trying to fill. Just remember that the best approach in any situation is really to choose quality over quantity.

Eliminate unnecessary steps in your hiring process

Although it can be a little tedious, documenting each step of your hiring process will help to determine exactly what you’re doing and how long each step is taking.

Once you’ve done this, you can get an idea of what is taking up the most time and then figure out how to eliminate or streamline the process.

Some ways to streamline your hiring process might be by using a scheduler app for coordinating interviews or by outsourcing a recruitment partner to source, screen and make initial contact with candidates. You can also challenge the number of approvals required from your leadership team or look at new-age ways to get your star candidate in front of them in some way.

Introduce flexible interviewing options

Today’s top candidates are very busy balancing many work and life commitments which means there may be limitations when it comes to their and your interview availability, making them harder to schedule and therefore delaying the interview process or even deterring top candidates altogether.

So why not offer more flexible interviewing options such as the option to request interviews in the evenings or early morning, or perhaps the option to request the first interview via video?

This will help you to engage more quickly with a busy job seeker than other hiring companies.

Get proactive with passive candidates

According to research by LinkedIn, three-quarters of the fully employed workforce around the world consider themselves passive candidates and 45 percent are fully open to considering a new opportunity. Additionally, we found that 35 percent of mid to senior executives are casually looking for their next opportunity, even if they don’t plan to change jobs.

Based on this information, you should consider putting more focus headhunting passive candidates who aren’t necessarily actively looking for a job but interested in making a change.

Taking the steps to revamp your recruitment process and cutting out the inefficiencies will help to ensure you’ll land that top talent over your competitors. If you need help with your next hiring process, contact us here today.

Javier Sierra 6Jopfhzkggk Unsplash