STOP SLOW HIRING FROM KILLING YOUR RECRUITING RESULTS
A quick view of how increasing hiring speed can dramatically increase new hire quality
ERE Spring - April 24, 2014 © Dr John Sullivan
These slides are available at ERE.net
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5 goals for today
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They asked me to…1.Be a provocateur… and to aggressively
challenge your thinking2.To highlight the reasons why “expedited hiring”
is critical in a competitive marketplace3.To highlight the cost of slow hiring4.To highlight the best practice approaches for
decreasing hiring time5.To answer your questions on expedited hiring
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How about a quick illustration of how speed impacts quality
Slow decisions have consequences
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If you wanted to land a hot prom date…• How many offers would the top potential dates get?• How many days after the prom announcement until
the “in high demand” dates would say yes to an offer?• If you waited 43 days to finally ask a date to go… What are the odds that a top date would be available?And if a prospect said yes to you… how “ugly” would your date be? Any questions?
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Let’s look at the top negative impacts from slow hiring
You shouldn’t worry about slow hiring unless there are numerous negative
business and recruiting impacts from it
The top 10 impacts of slow hiring (in order of impact)
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Slow hiring will cost you $1.Because your jobs are open for too many days…
you will lose productivity from all open jobs… and significant revenue from rev. generating jobs
2.You’ll have to pay new hires more in salary because they will be “bid on”
3.Your customers and employees will also feel the negative impacts of weak hiring and vacancies
4.Extended hiring processes can significantly raise “hidden hiring costs” (beyond 4 interviews, wastes a manager time)
The top 10 impacts of slow hiring
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You will have fewer applicants5. Because of your image as “slow decision-
makers”… you will drive away many top prospects… who assume that it reflects your company’s culture
6. Because slow hiring damages your brand image, as well as the candidate experience… you will have fewer applicants (Glassdoor.com)
The top 10 impacts of slow hiring
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Other hiring problems7. Most of your “in high demand” candidates
will drop out before the late stages of your process
8. Delayed offers will cause you to lose a high % of “head-to-head” talent competitor battles
9. If you are targeting “passives”, slow may instead result in the hiring of actives
10.Slow weakens the work – reward connection… thus reducing hiring manager excitement (C+) (also recruiter excitement) (compounding the problem)
How can you easily demonstrate how much speed impacts new hire quality?
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Pick a highly competitive job opening1.After the position closes, without explanation have
the manager numerically rank the resumes from the best to the worse… and put those numbers away
2.Again, without involving the manager, have an intern contact each of the candidates in the top 10% every few days until none of the top 10 remain in the job market… note the # of days
3.After you hire someone, ask the manager what ranking they thought that the new hire had, and then look at the original rankings and reveal the # that the new hire was really ranked (# 75)… also reveal that all the top 10% were gone by __ days
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But how much does slow hiring cost?
As a rule of thumb, I estimate that the “on the job performance” of those you hire into competitive jobs… Decreases by as much as 1% for every extra
day that you delay a hiring decision So if you add just 10 days to your normal
average TTF… The “on the job performance” of your new hire
will drop by 10%
How much would a 10% decrease in new hire output cost a firm in $ ?
Pick a firm
Amazon Microsoft Google Facebook AppleEmployee output value per year (rev. per employee)
10% off the rev per employee = A loss of $_______ per hire
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$750,000 $785,000$1,060,000$1,320,000$2,230,000
(Calculated using 10/19/2013 data from MarketWatch)
Any questions?
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Which stages of the hiring process have the highest negative impact on speed
Let’s quickly look at…
Where do most recruiting delays occur?
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If you use a process map to identify the bottlenecks… you generally find that the largest recruiting delays are:
Lag factor #1 – Interview schedulingLag factor #2 – Resume screening (managers/ recruiters)
Lag factor #3 – The approval process for reqs
Others lag points – creating the offer, re-opening the search with new specs, indecisive managers etc.
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8 categories of options that are available to improve speed of hire
Let’s shift to the…
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Process reengineering steps
3 higher risk “homer options” for improving speed of hire
2. Do the hiring steps faster… but with the same resources (i.e. Rush through them)
3. Skip some steps at random (C-cube)
1. Do nothing in a highly competitive job market… and end up hiring weak talent
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Here are 5 recommended S of H options
1. Compression by shrinking the “dead time” between the steps (Ex. – hold night and weekend interviews to reduce interview scheduling dead time)
2. Do some steps simultaneously (Ex. – instead of waiting until final interviews are completed, do reference checks during the final interviews)
3. Do some steps in advance (pre-do) (Ex. – have employees make “pipeline referrals” (that are pre-assessed and pre-sold) for jobs that will likely have openings… so these pre-qualified candidates can be ready to go immediately when needed)
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The 5 recommended S of H options
4. Analyze… and then take the low value parts out of the step (Ex. – because most interview pass/reject decisions are made quickly, shorten interviews by __ min.)
5. Prioritize the steps (based on their impact)… and apply more / better resources to the step… so it is now done faster and better (Ex. – speed up interview scheduling… eliminate the need for back-and-forth messaging… by utilizing a web scheduling calendar… to allow them to select their own available interview times)
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Actions for each of the different recruiting steps
(they appear in chronological order)
Let’s now look at…
Strategic process changes
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Recruiting process changes for speed1. Train recruiters and managers, including:
• Educating them on the impacts of expedited hiring• Telling them when they are part of the problem • Giving them the best speed tools to use
2. Prioritize your jobs – expedite hiring for jobs where speed has a major impact and where quality is needed (revenue generating and mission critical)
3. Prioritize applicants that are “in high demand” – expedite hiring for a job when you have a “in high demand” candidate and speed is necessary to land them
The requisition approval process
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Expediting the requisition approval process1.Limit approvals for “expedited jobs” – because
most approvals have no actual impact2.Have an “auto-approval date” for “expedited
jobs” - let a req move forward automatically… if a manager fails to act in time
3.Let sourcing begin after only 60% of the signatures are obtained for “expedited jobs” – let sourcing be simultaneous
4.Utilize electronic approvals – no paper
Job specs
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Eliminate excessive job specs Show individual managers how realistic position
specs can dramatically decrease sourcing time… because fewer searches have to be re-started… after the specs have been lowered to a reasonable level
Job posting process
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Expedited job posting approachesBecause… “almost 50 % of all hires… had applied within the first week” after a job was posted (Source: StartWire)
1.Set earlier job posting end dates – or for expedited jobs… begin sorting/ qualifying resumes before the posting deadline is reached
2. Do simultaneous postings – post internal preference and external job announcements so they run at the same time
Response speed
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Actions to improve response speed1.Improve return calls with “same-level calls” -
having a professional at the same job level contact the target may result in a… 10x higher response rate
2.Use the mobile platform for communicating because it has the fastest response time – use market research to identify the response rate of each communication channel (because it is carried and accessed 24/7)
Resume screening process
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Expedite resume screening 1.Use LinkedIn profiles rather than waiting for
an updated resume – “passives” can be slow in applying and… also with LinkedIn, side-by-side candidate comparisons are quicker
2.Set benchmark resume review time periods – and alert managers and recruiters when they have reached the deadline
3.Withdraw resumes from slow hiring managers – require that resumes must be read in x days or candidates are withdrawn and they go to other managers
Resume screening process
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Expedite resume screening (continued)
4. “5 great no uglies” candidate slates – perfect candidate slates make hiring managers more willing to read the supplied resumes (a single “ugly” included resume will frustrate them)
Pre-identification
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Pre-identify and pre-assess 1.An electronic prospect talent community – for
nurturing and assessing those that have expressed an interest in some future job at your firm
2.Pre-assessed talent pools – create a talent pipeline of pre-assessed applicants for key jobs
3.Predictive “prior to need” hiring - forecast growth, turnover and retirement openings… so hires are in training prior to need (49ers)
4.Contests – use online technical contests to identify future prospects to target (most contestants are likely to be “passives”)
Referral tools for speed
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1. Referrals are generally #1 in TTF and Q of H2. Blue light specials & sandwich board referrals
– provide periodic “need help alerts” for key jobs3. Boomerang referrals – these “already known”
ex-employees can be contacted & rehired quickly4. Same day referral events – hold on-site referral
events where employees are interviewed about their top referrals… and candidate interview decisions are made on-site
5. Add referral deadlines – for expedited jobs… screen and interview A+ referrals within 1 week
Referral tools for speed (continued)
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6.Meet the team at an on-site evening event – invite top referrals to “a meet the team” evening event where offers are made on site
7.Increase the referral bonus for immediate fill jobs – give more $ for fast referrals within 1 week
8.Proactively seek out top past referrers – and ask them directly for referrals for expedited jobs in their job family (top performers also)
Interview speed tools
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1. Limit the # of interviews – set a limit or educate them of the value of doing too many
2. Use live video or telephone interviews – reduce scheduling delays, eliminate travel time and impress them with your use of technology
3. Copy your video interviews – make a video so that the absent can watch them later or they can be viewed again in lieu of a re-interview
4. Interview Friday – require hiring managers to be available on “interview day”
5. Hold all interviews on the same day – coordinate interviews so that they only need to visit once
Interview speed tools (continued)
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6. Speed interviewing – follow the speed dating model
7. Track the time to complete all interviews by manager – so that slow managers can be helped
8. Limit consensus hiring decisions – avoid it because consensus decision-making dramatically increases hiring time
9. Avoid duplicate questions in multiple interviews – shorten total interview time by assigning the interview questions to the most appropriate person… also share the interview questions and responses to minimize duplications
Offer phase tools
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1. Know their “job acceptance criteria” – if you know what they need to say “yes”, your first offer will be enough (and you won’t need to renegotiate or shift to the second-ranked candidate)
2. Same day offers – don’t let them leave “offerless”
3. Exploding offers - an incentive to say yes quickly or before they leave the building
4. Offer acceptance on the Mobile phone – make it easy to instantly say yes from anywhere
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Some advanced actions to consider
If you are really bold…
10 advanced speed approaches
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1.No job opening hiring (corporate resource) -- when "game changers” or “pioneers” become suddenly available… large firms must have to have the capability of hiring a few "corporate resources" each year
2.Evergreen jobs – one or two jobs are designated as Evergreen jobs… where you “hire them all” whenever they become available (do the same for key jobs with continuous turnover)
3.Hire during slack hiring times – during periods of low competition for talent, it’s easier to hire quality fast (Jan. is the highest/December is the lowest)
Advanced speed approaches
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4.Most wanted list – assemble a list of high-impact targets and start assessing and selling in January
5.Service level agreements – set time and quality expectations for HR and hiring managers
6.Reward fast hiring - measure and reward hiring managers and recruiters on speed, bad hires and quality on key jobs
7.Assign someone to expedite hiring progress – assign a recruiter to track hiring progress (like FedEx tracks it's packages) on expedited jobs and to intervene and expedite when necessary
10 advanced speed approaches
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8. Assign your best recruiters – put the best and fastest on expedited hire jobs (or a special hire team)
9. Use 3rd party firms – for non-speed jobs if a recruiter shortage is a contributor to the slowdown
10.Convert current temps to permanent – they are a known quantity that can get up to speed quickly
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Use the right speed of hire metrics
And finally…
Speed of hire metrics
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TTF – be careful, averages are misleading TTS – start dates do impact revenue/productivity Filled by “need date” – a good supplementary
metric (Santa Claus) Use a quality of hire metric – you must measure
the on-the-job performance and retention of new hires… in order to tell precisely where speed matters
Benchmark data – get tailored TTF comparisons from www.staffing.org and PwC / Saratoga –
TTF SHRM survey 43 days, Google 45 days
