The cost of delay: Why reducing time-to-hire is critical for business success

Recruitment is getting more challenging. According to new data from The Josh Bersin Company, on average, it takes 44 days to fill open positions.1 While there’s wide variation in hiring time depending on the industry, highly skilled roles tend to take longer to fill. In fact, SHRM reports that energy and defence companies have the highest time-to-hire rates, at 67 days, due to the specialisation of roles and small talent pools available.2  

However, it's for precisely these types of highly skilled roles that the time-to-hire needs to be reduced. Major capital projects across the globe are facing significant overruns in costs and delivery, with total claims exceeding $80bn in value and cumulative overruns amounting to a staggering 840 years.3 4That’s an enormous cost to society.  

Better and more efficient recruitment is one of the ways that can help reduce this cost. But how? Let’s take a closer look.  

1. Invest in your Employer Value Proposition 

When it comes to attracting top talent, paying a competitive salary is only one factor. For the new generation of workers, having a purpose is key. For others, working in a sustainability-focused organisation is what drives them. At PageGroup, we believe successful recruiting starts with your Employer Value Proposition (EVP). This is the unique set of offerings you make to current employees and prospective hires.  

By investing time and energy into your EVP, you’ll attract the candidates with the skills you need and the values and attitude that fit with the culture you’re building. After all, candidate fit goes two ways: Will this person thrive in this business? And is this business right for this person? Highlighting the importance of ‘fit’, research from the University of Oxford shows happy workers are 13% more productive.5 A recruitment partner can help you identify the perks and benefits that appeal to your target audience, as well as the reasons that stop them moving on. These can all be incorporated into your job specs. 

2. Streamline your recruitment process 

Caused by the fear of a bad hire, we’ve witnessed the interview process getting longer and longer. Some candidates are interviewed five or six times for one job. It’s little wonder the average time-to-hire is 44 days. But the secondary negative effect is that it results in an increase in candidate drop off. Research from Cronofy shows 43% of candidates globally have dropped out of a hiring process because of delays.6 High-quality candidates will not wait if other offers are received.  

The solution is to be very clear about what needs to be assessed in the interview and who to involve at the outset. With this basic planning the recruitment process can be completed in two or three phases rather than six or seven.  

3. Streamline with a primary strategic recruitment partner 

Global organisations need to use multiple partners across multiple geographies to find new hires, as it provides a wide net. The challenge with this approach is that it duplicates effort, creates complexity, drives up costs and slows recruitment down. 

Working with a primary strategic recruitment partner who can tap into a hybrid delivery model of national, regional and specialised recruitment hubs allows for a globally aligned approach and full visibility of talent. This means the recruitment partner can build an agile talent pipeline across geographies and skill requirements which results in a faster time-to-hire, stronger candidate fit and a lower total cost of ownership of recruitment. 

4. Use technology for efficiency 

With the digitisation of job applications generating a huge amount of data, it makes sense to digitalise as much of the sorting process as possible too. Automating the assessment of applications can save significant time and manual effort. 

At PageGroup, we have a dedicated tool that helps us do that. It’s called Page Insights, and it’s a unique business intelligence tool that leverages the latest external and internal data to give you the information you need to make more informed decisions. By giving you a global view of information on things like salaries, geographies and competitors, you get the insight you need to build a pipeline of appropriate, high-quality candidates before the interview rounds. 

However, it must be remembered that in recruitment, human interactions will be the determining factor that ensures a candidate’s values fit with the company’s and will also determine how a candidate feels about the process and whether they accept the job. Technology is a tool; never a replacement.  

5. Create a better candidate experience  

While making decisions, it’s important to keep candidates informed, for example letting them know when to expect a response, how to prepare for an interview or why they need to complete a particular test. This reduces the chance of them dropping out and slowing the process down — yet research shows up to 60% of candidates don't receive updates about the interview process at all.7 Here, lack of communication is effectively an “own goal”. To get the right people in the door, you have to invest the time and the effort to create a better candidate experience. Because when you do, your candidates will be more engaged and you’ll streamline the hiring process.  

Recruiting top talent, faster. Made possible by PageGroup 

Partnering with PageGroup makes it possible to recruit highly skilled roles, at pace. We’ve global scale and local expertise to navigate regulations and legislation in 36 markets. Together with our technology, our consultants map your requirements and tailor a recruitment strategy for you across the full PageGroup capabilities. So you can get the best global talent, in the right place, without delay.