Your recruitment process is too long! The real reason you're losing candidates

Recruitment process is not always straightforward. On the one hand, you are likely looking to fill the role quite quickly, especially, if it’s having an impact on your company’s productivity and the workload distribution across the team. On the other, hiring the wrong person can cost you more time and money in the long run with the potential of having to restart the whole process again. Your talent acquisition times will depend on your company, the structure of your HR department as well as the specialisms of your ideal employee.

However, companies across all industries often create unnecessarily lengthy hiring processes. Here’s why this could be causing you to lose candidates and how to rectify it.

Your recruitment process seems endless

Of course, it’s important to thoroughly vet your potential candidates, especially if the role requires specific knowledge and expertise. However, a lengthy and convoluted recruitment process can be off-putting to your candidates, while not always producing the desired results for your company either. When faced with a war for talent, there isn’t the time for a 3 stage interview process at the moment.

To solve this issue, really try to hone in on what’s actually necessary to get to the hiring stage and ensure that the hiring manager and HR department are all working from the same page. Studies show that structured interviews produce better results than simply having a chat with your participant, or even doing it through a few separate interviews. Perhaps have them prepare a task or some answers beforehand, so you can test their expertise on things that really matter to your company. Out with dated interview questions, such as what are your strengths and weaknesses. You need to identify questions that are relevant to the role being performed and that will enable your candidate to demonstrate why and how they are the best fit.

Having a second interviewer present can also prevent conscious or unconscious biases of a single interviewer from affecting their decision making. We would recommend reviewing your current recruitment process and getting rid of the steps that don’t seem to produce meaningful results.

Remember that you are also being interviewed

The interview process is not just a chance for you to find out about a candidate, it is their opportunity to work out if the company meets their career goals and is the right fit for them. Give them the opportunity to ask questions about your company’s culture, team dynamics and help them to gain a clear picture of what it is like to work with your business.

Remember to communicate with your candidates

Companies and candidates alike have become far too comfortable with ‘ghosting’ each other. While you may not think it’s important for you to keep the candidates updated throughout the recruitment process even before they’re hired, this could be a red flag to some. It gets across a message that you are not employee-centric and your communication skills as a company are relatively poor. In a candidate driven market those candidates won’t stay on the market for long, so you need to act fast and keep them engaged, particularly if you are looking to fill a specific niche or skilled role.

Take time to check in with your candidates, let them know how long each stage of the recruitment process might take, give them feedback where appropriate and find out whether they are interviewing elsewhere. You don’t want to miss out on your ideal candidate simply because they got fed up with your lack of communication throughout or they were snapped up by the company that did get all of these things right.

You’re too focused on finding the ‘perfect’ candidate

Here’s the thing – that perfect candidate rarely exists. As mentioned at the start of the article, your recruitment process should have a strong focus on candidate retention. This means it’s all about finding someone who is the right fit for your company. Try to look beyond these ‘perfection’ markers and evaluate the potential of your future employee. Are they likely to thrive in the role long-term and take on the challenges well? Does your company ethos and culture align with their requirements? Would their lifestyle and personality match the nature of the job, and will they gel with the team in situ? What about their potential? You are looking to hire talent into your business to help you to grow or scale your business. You can always provide additional training for any professional development they may need. However, there are plenty more aspects that will determine candidate retention that are not always tangible from a perfectly polished CV.

If you are looking for specialist support for your next hire or you would like to talk to us about proactive recruitment and how Auxeris can help - get in touch here for a confidential conversation today. We're an agency that has a network of experienced, specialist recruiters who will work with you to help you identify and recruit top talent for your business. We'll become an extension of your business, an experience consultative ear, to help you build successful teams that boost your bottom line.