What are the most effective strategies for reducing time-to-hire?

If you don't have time to branding, you must have time to hire. The right Employer Branding strategies definitely reduce time-to-hire. It's not necessarily a question of time or budget, it mostly depends on the loyalty and commitment of your past and present employees.

Reducing time-to-hire requires collaboration and agreeing on how you will work together to achieve an efficient and effective process is crucial. Defining the required skills needed for the role involves an in-depth conversation from the off-set. Identifying the reason the role is available in addition to the skills and qualifications required. If there are any skills gaps, these can be included within the job description and assessed either at the pre-screen stage or within the interview. Knowing as much information as possible empowers and enables you to have effective conversations with candidates, thus saving time and helping to reduce time-to-hire.

A question much maligned in the industry is asking the question, "When do you want someone in place?" the answer so often is "As soon as possible" So looking at it from a different view, don't ask that question but give them the information up front and work on the timetable together with your client and let candidates know what the plan is. So as soon as possible can be, if someone is in a position 4 months sometimes 5 months, take into account 3 months notice for management positions and effectively you have one/two months to find the ideal candidate so focus on that timescale and get availability and process clear from the start. Manage the expectation!

This is the first and one of the most important steps. My own experience is that it has always been a long hiring process when the hiring manager could not define exactly what kind of candidate he was looking for.

Best way to simplify this process: Identify the top three pain points that this role will alleviate RIGHT NOW. Hire on these. Align candidates to these with vigor and allow the rest to be come later. So often orgs will jump on one open req to fulfill every missing piece. Most good candidates won't have ALL of these. This can really hamper the process.

In my experience most companies have too many people in the process. Write out the existing process and all the players...then cut out any people or steps that are not absolutely necessary...slash and burn The CEO and top leaders need to make it known that hiring is the most important thing we do and inject that into the culture. Reward people for doing it well Most companies recycle old descriptions without ANY real important qualifications. Everyone wants "good communications skills" and "the ability to work with a wide variety of personalities"...tell me something important Why is the position open? What's the expected career path? Why have people left before and why have people stayed? What's the culture like? I'm out of cha

To cut down on time-to-hire, streamline your process. Start with a clear job description—know what you want before you start looking. Next, use technology—ATS for filtering, AI for initial screening, and scheduling tools so you're not playing calendar Tetris. Build a talent pool; always be recruiting, even if you don't have an opening that second. Relationships matter. Get hiring managers on the same page quick; miscommunication will drag things out. And speed it up with one-and-dones: one interview day, multiple stakeholders. Cut to the chase and make decisions swiftly. Keep it moving or lose talent to someone who will.

Each position warrants a tailored hiring process. A Tier 1 helpdesk candidate shouldn't undergo the same extensive interview process as a CEO. Customize the hiring process to be efficient and effective for every role.

Use AI, but intelligently and with relevance. For example: 1. Hiring manager gives recruiter (agency or in-house) 5 real-life technical questions to ask at initial interview. 2. Recruiter uses AI note-taker for that interview and sends transcript notes from tech questions with answers to hiring manager with CV 3. Hiring manager can make interview selection decisions based on technical answers to real-life technical questions, not just a CV. This means better candidates selected for interview, and can also cut a stage out of the process.

Once you’ve signed off the roles, set up a set stage process. Normally less than 3 with a 2 stage being the most common. Typically this is a first stage with HR and/or peers followed by leadership in the second. Some companies switch this around so that the best cheerleaders talk to the candidates first. An interview with the hiring team first can make that subtle difference if trying to attract niche candidates.

Don't use excessive hiring stages as a way to avoid making a hiring decision. Ensure that the stages have meaning and evaluate a candidate's competency against the desired attributes in the job description. Ensure that the key decision makers have time set aside in their calendars to discuss the candidates to prevent delays.

Perfect. It is my experience that many sourcers or recruiters do not know all the possible tools they could use and do not prepare a recruitment plan. So they start a job advertisement and then wait. When that doesn't work, they search their favourite database. Another week has passed. Many recruiters are junior and not familiar with the tools available. A recruiter or sourcer has to keep learning because the world is changing and new tools are coming.

If you streamline the process, adding optional steps to allow for slightly delayed but engaged processes, you will work faster and not lose a great candidate to logistics.

Work with your TA teams or your partner recruitment consultants to streamline the process. Provide them with 3-5 basic interview questions - tailored to the role - that they can ask candidates, also, give them the possible correct answers to those questions. This will save you time from interviewing people that do not know the basics, this time can be used more efficiently to interview people that have a higher chance of succeeding.

Find a TA team or recruiters that you trust. Spend time with them to explain exactly what you are looking for and trust them to build the pipeline for you. When you work with people who know you well and know what you are looking for, your process will be more efficient.

The best way to hire is to consistently talent pool. Especially if hiring the same people throughout the year. Gain access to certain talent pools so that it’s easier to hire. Link your EVP into this so people buy in to what you’re doing.

I believe in professional networking. These connections are valuable. Especially because they can refer good potential candidates to me. I often work with positions where you can't really build a talent pool because there are no candidates. That's why professional referrals are the most important.

Inbound marketing is the best way to achieve this. Candidates should know about your brand and its values, as well as why it is a great place to work. Any perks and benefits such as extended holidays, bonuses, etc should be clearly communicated if it is better than the peer companies.

Every time your org receives and inbound from a talented and relevant individual, meet with them. Add them to the CRM for regular touchpoints. This can save so much time and money when the right spot opens. It also creates an incredibly strong connection with that individual.

I always say it's best to be proactive than reactive. Developing a talent pipeline to refer to when hirings are available increases the likelihood of decreasing the time to fill metrics. You can create pipelines by maintaining contact with previous candidates, collaborating with organizations, schools, employment centers, etc. and creating a social media brand to attract potential candidates

Hiring managers should be empowered to "run with the ball" as and when required during selection processes. Suppose they meet an exceptional applicant (what exceptional looks like should obviously be agreed upon beforehand). In that case, they should have the flexibility to coordinate additional activities (such as follow-up meetings, testing or additional selection tasks) to ensure that anyone exceptional can be assessed, and potentially secured, as quickly as possible. Time-to-hire is often high where there is rigidity or inflexibility around both contingencies and hiring manager authority in the selection process.

Your Hiring Managers should be your champions. - Raise their profile and your own by empowering them to speak to the communities both online and in person. - Get involved in podcasts. - Write whitepapers about their work. - Look to other companies for great HM practices, Booking.Com literally give candidates a guide to passing interviews via their HMs. - Have your HMs talk about tech and groundbreaking practices they are leading in the business. - Allow them time to develop these practices.

This is essential. When a candidate is in progress, they ALWAYS need to be engaged. I like to apply a tough love rule- if there are serious doubts -better to let it go in a classy way and come back if needed- than to start ghosting and just leading the person on.

Candidate experience is fundamental to someone joining or not. If working with recruiters brief them on the importance of the journey. Feedback is a large part of this especially for those that have interviewed and taken time to go through a process. Also candidates have a great personal network and so can sell or destroy your brand by word of mouth.

As a candidate myself, I can assert that the key factor in reducing time-to-hire is WANTING to reduce time-to-hire. I constantly hear that companies want to hire “as soon as possible” and that filling this position is “important.” But no one ever says it’s very important or critically important, and no one attaches a hard date to “as soon as possible.” Therefore I conclude that the company does NOT want to reduce time-to-hire, and may not even WANT to hire. If you want someone on board by November 15, make us candidates jump…and you jump too.

Regularly monitor your KPIs, how many CVs go to interviews, 1st to 2nd Ratio then offer to acceptance rate. Measuring these will highlight areas of improvement and allow you to change the process to match.

The best way to reduce time to hire is to have top talent approach your organisation on an inbound basis, or, at the very least make sure your brand visibility and awareness is so high that you cut out the time it takes to educate and sell your organisation/opportuntiy. To do that you have to create a compelling hiring brand narrative and tell that story at scale via various digital assets, consistently.

In my experience, the greatest opportunity lie in two areas. 1, Hiring manager/business KPIs 2,Stage reduction In relation to the first example, hiring manager availability and CV feedback (when dissecting hiring data) is where you find 30%+ of the waste in a process. By agreeing two-way expectations and presetting interview slots in advance, you can cut a load of waste. In relation to the second point, indecision is the most frustrating part of a process, for a candidate and the recruiter. Reducing stages and having multiple interviewers present simultaneously, will reduce time to hire (assuming that the candidates meet the brief)

Reflection is crucial, especially if you work for a large organisation and are likely to recruit for the position again in the future. What did you learn? Were you able to build a talent pipeline? Given the labour market at the moment, this may not have been possible so what could you have done differently? Review where the majority of your candidates come from i.e. Google, Linkedin, Job boards - do you need to identify new avenues in the future? Find time to research these avenues to help speed up the process for the next time you need to recruit for a similar position.

I find building a thorough understanding of the role, key context and challenges, how it works with other stakeholders and colleagues, sharing any anticipated changes and taking stock of what is not changing, in reality is important prep. All this will inform a tailored engagement sourcing & selection approach. Sometimes upfront research and rebenchmarking or key decisions may be needed or potential changes to scope and expectations with stakeholders - ideally before the role goes to market. This all helps towards a considered & compelling proposition that can advance in a timely & progressive way for everyone.