Recruiting the appropriate personnel is the first step in enabling business success. To avoid issues, talent acquisition teams must work more productively and efficiently to discover the best applicants given the large number of unfilled positions and the growth in job-hopping. If your goal is to increase talent acquisition productivity, optimizing your hiring process is the best way. One of the most crucial elements in raising talent acquisition efficiency is the careful monitoring of recruiting metrics. Metrics may assist your employees in determining the skill level of fresh hires, identify any bottlenecks that may arise, and it will greatly improve your capacity to identify the best candidates.
According to the best recruiters, the top metrics to track are
- Time to hire
- Quality of Hire
- Cost per hire
“Time to hire” is foremost among these. Why? First off, a lengthy recruiting procedure makes 57% of job searchers lose interest in a position. Consequently, improving this indicator should be a high priority. Otherwise, you risk having good prospects slip through your fingers.
Time to hire is the total number of days it takes a company to hire a candidate. The duration starts when an application is received and ends when the candidate accepts the offer.
Time to hire = date the candidate accepts the offer – the date the candidate applied for the position
E.g.: John applies for a data analyst role in your company on 10 November and he accepts the job offer on 25th December. The time to hire is 29 days.
29 days, in this sample case, is not an exaggerated timeline – it is the global industry average. But the number 29 doesn’t convey a lot of insight, since many factors affect the overall time.
Let’s deep dive into that hiring case.
10th November: John applies for the job – the stopwatch starts
15th November: John gets a callback from your company for a primary interview
17th November: John schedules the primary interview on 17th November (two days from the callback)
25th November: John is invited for a second round interview and john takes the interview the same day
8th December: John gets the offer for the position after all the background checks (12 days after the second round of interviews)
18th December: John accepts the job offer after 10 days of receiving the acceptance.
The overall process adds up to 29 days. Since it is the industry average, not many bothers to look too much into it, but there are a lot of places where the whole process can be optimized.
To find your company’s “Time to hire”, average the time to hire for the role calculated from the above-mentioned method for all the company’s recruitment drives in the last six months.
Time to hire - TTH
TTH for company A – Average of (TTH for Analyst, TTH of Accountant, TTH for Digital Marketer. Etc)
Why time to hire is a critical measure
- Indirectly increases the cost per hire
- Time to hire can cause top talent to be poached by more agile companies
- Longer hiring time can reduce the onboarding satisfaction rate of recruits
- Puts additional strain on your current employees
- Time to hire can directly affect the corporate goals
The best ways to reduce the Time to hire
Identify and articulate your hiring needs
The more underappreciated part of achieving a smooth and agile hiring process is writing a solid bulletproof job description with clearly articulated
- Job roles and responsibilities
- Keywords
- Objectives for the role
- Required core skills
- Experience and other requirements
- Salary
Having all these details shared with all the prospective applicants will help prevent bad-fit candidates from applying. You will receive lesser applications, but all of them you do receive will probably fit your requirements.
Using ATS (Applicant tracking software)
When handling hundreds of applicants, it is almost impossible to efficiently manage all the applications without a proper ATS system. Without ATS, the process will usually be tedious, and more often than not critical errors start creeping in.
ATS enables all the candidate data into a single platform and streamlines applicant management. Most employers who use ATS report that they find it easier to hire talent since the integration of ATS systems. The ATS streamlines your tasks by taking control of the administrative processes, interview scheduling, CV rating, and performance tracking.
Deploy Pre hiring skill assessments
When you have set your structures in place with the above steps, skill assessments can have a magical effect on your time to hire. We have had customers reporting a 30% reduction in time to hire because you will conduct just 3 three interviews in a place where you conducted 15 interviews. Additionally, you will also know a great deal about the candidate before the interview – you won’t need to gauge the candidate’s knowledge and aptitude in the interview, rather you can focus on the fit for the role.
Skill testing using a testing software tool like Merreo that offers pre-designed and validated pre-hiring tests crafted by experts eliminates the company’s need to create tests, helps the candidates take the test at their convenience at their homes, and reduces dependency on the hiring staff by automatic grading.
Conclusion
Talent acquisition teams are continuously seeking methods to improve their hiring procedures. The most essential component of the process is tracking and improving the time to hire.
While there is always a chance that a hasty recruiting decision may result in a poor hire, data-driven choices and the appropriate approaches will help you find good prospects more quickly. When done properly, shorter hiring cycles provide better candidates and better employees.
Whichever direction you take to reduce your time to hire, if you're not already using Merreo, sign up for a free trial and start hiring better candidates quickly, You will see the results fast.
