Time is money – How to accelerate the recruitment process

Time is an important element in the recruitment process, as in most business activities and its waste results in losses of resources for an organization. Once a new position in the company is opened and once the recruitment process starts, every day that passes until finding a new employee for the job can affect the smooth running of the whole organization.

Staff shortages have negative effects not only on the department that lost an employee or has opened a new position to cover a larger volume of work. Thus, the employees of that department will have to work harder to compensate the lack of one of their colleagues. Besides, if we talk about a department such as IT, accountancy or HR, designed to assist also the needs of other departments, this shortage will be felt even more.

Accelerating the pace of recruitment is a goal that must start with an investment in staff assigned with attracting new talents. They must be aware of the most effective methods of recruitment and reduce the time required to find new employees. Hiring managers and HR department employees should be included in training programs in which the negative effects of a slow recruitment are exposed and explained.

Prioritize the positions for which you are recruiting

Prioritizing the recruitment process for certain key positions in the company is also an important element for improving this aspect. Thus, instead of focusing on the quick finding of suitable candidates for all positions open at a certain time, an organization should focus its efforts on hiring people whose presence has a major impact on certain departments or ongoing projects.

Once the recruitment process starts it’s recommended to post an announcement for the opened position. A dense job description, containing excessive details about a job can seem less attractive in the eyes of candidates and bring a small number of applications. Therefore, it would be preferable that the description of the job is as clear and as concise as possible and not to be charged with lots if irrelevant details for this stage of the recruitment process.

It is also better to seek people not only outside the organization but also inside it or to take into account the promotion of experienced employees and to train them to fill positions with greater responsibility. Searching for candidates through two sources (internal and external) should be done in parallel, because one may never know where the right person to fill a specific position is.

Recommendation bonus

Last but not least, you should encourage recommendations coming from people inside the organization. For example, if an employee recommends a candidate who proves to be suitable and is hired it would be good to give a bonus to the one who recommended him. The bonus should be higher if the proposal came during the first three days after the opening of a new position.

These are just some of the ways that can accelerate the recruitment process, to save time and energy, resources that could be directed to other important activities for the organization. The list can, however, continue and we should not finish before reminding recruiters and employers that they can also include here the benefits that new technologies bring, such as searching talents via professional networks such as LinkedIn or organizing online interviews.

BIA HR TEAM