The “ Time to hire” dilemma
As recruiters, we pride ourselves on our days to fill ratio. In 2023, GRN Coastal, with the help of our clients, boasted 27 days to fill ratio, calculated from the day the search started to the day the candidate signed the offer.
Today’s recruitment market is very competitive and those companies that adhere to their own processes typically win the war for top talent. Recruitment takes discipline and commitment from your entire team. So much is being said about having the right talent that can drive a profitable business, it all starts with your people. Thus your process to obtain and retain your teammates has to be a major area of focus.
From our perspective, many efforts must fall in line to make this happen.
- The client must have a sense of urgency to fill the role.
- The client needs to provide crisp and accurate interview feedback.
- The client needs to have a defined interview process with interviewers committing to do the interview on their calendar.
- The client truly needs to know what they want capabilities wise in the candidate
- The client needs to know exactly what they are willing to pay based on their market demands.
We typically can put together a pool of qualified, committed candidates in a few weeks’ time and present these candidates to our clients.
Things which can slow the process down are:
- Interviewers’ ability to interview based on being away from the office or too busy.
- Unrealistic salary budgets put forth based on market demand of top talented candidates, clients just not plugged into the dollars it takes in their market to secure their candidate of choice.
- Lack of street level intelligence on what your competition pays for the same role.
- Getting feedback slowly and starting round 2 of interviews.
- Delayed feedback and candidate loses interest in the client’s role and accepts another offer prompting a restart to the search.
- Interview team not being able to select a candidate and decide to wait for more candidates to interview.
- Delays in putting forth the actual offer and losing out on candidates that can do the role while waiting for the perfect candidate and then finding out that those candidates require more money to sign and are out of budget. Again, not willing to pay the market rate for top talent.
Time kills all deals. If you truly want to make a quick, impactful hire you need to be committed to your defined process, timelines and have realistic feel for budget. Getting the search started isn’t just about putting together the job spec, it is about having the street level knowledge about the market salary demand for your geography. The other key factor is timely communication with your managers, recruiter and the actual candidate. We encourage wide open communication with our clients weekly.
Recruitment is a team sport, when the recruiter and client are on the same page, results can be achieved in a timely fashion and within budget.
