Hiring talent that’s right for the business has been among top 3 challenges for organizations. In spite of competent recruitment teams, employee referral programs and super efficient outsourced recruitment firms, we continue to fall behind the hiring goals.
Mid management roles take 6-8 months and leadership positions take up to 12 months to fill. Tactical/frontline roles taking up time too causing opportunity loss & business impact
Know what you want in candidate & get your panel on same page
Ambiguity in Job Description & confusion among interview panel members are among top reasons for delayed hiring. There are often wasted efforts, wrong candidates showing up and right candidates slipping away due to communication gap among interviewers.
Define clear & crisp Job Description (JD) with expectations on academics, experience, skills needed and certifications – Run this through interviewers and clarify expectations.
Define keywords for candidate search, target companies in the region and any obvious traits to avoid
Get recruiters, interviews on the same page and set expectations on when you need the candidate on board.
2. Shorten overall duration – make decisions, quickly
Fix exact number of interview rounds needed, this is important.
Interviewers do introduce delays between the rounds, set clear expectations & hold them accountable ex: Interview feedback & go/no-go recommendation to be shared within 48 after interview.
Keep the candidate warm & informed in the meanwhile to ensure he/she doesn’t start loosing interest.
Indecision is another top cause of delays in hiring. There’s nothing called “perfect candidate”, look for non-impacting trade offs and make informed decisions quickly. Some needed skills are developed on the job.
3. Use hiring techniques: Hiring events, hiring roadshows, walk-ins.
Hiring events: If you are looking for multiple candidates of similar profile and are feeling short of time, hiring events are perfect models to leverage. They create momentum, save time & efforts.
For ex: You are looking for 4 DevOps engineers of top quality. Usual hiring process of interviewing one candidate at a time might take between 2-3 months at best to extend offers
Annouce a hiring event, distribute the date internally/externally. Recruitment team gets a goal of 35 confirmed candidates.
Create a panel with capacity to take 5 interviews simultaneously. Equip them with logistics, protocol to exchange real-time feedback among interviewers. Arrange for food & refreshments, saves time.
20-25 candidates will show up. It would take about 3-4hours to complete first set of discussions. Go for second/third rounds for shortlisted candidates.
At the end, form a interviewers round table, calibrate all candidates, stack rank and make decisions. If its done right, you will have at least 5 candidates to offer by the end of the day.
Talent scarcity, in my view is a perception & self-limiting thought, unless you are looking to hire in hundreds. Assign clear roles to people, divide & concur. Concluding my thoughts on this topic with below quote based on my over decade experience in hiring.
There are always more willing & suitable candidates looking for opportunities, than the available jobs there are, we just have to find them.
Happy hiring!
Best,
Sree Gade