7 proven ways to speed up the recruitment process

The competition for great candidates is hotter than ever right now. Here’s 7 great tips to speed up the recruitment process to get a great hire rather than dithering and having to settle for a mediocre one.

Bernadette Eichner

Jan 6, 2021

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One of the biggest challenges companies face is getting good candidates quickly. And it’s even more important now as many businesses are rebuilding after the tricky year that was 2020. Not only are you needing the right people quickly, you’re competing with others wanting the same.

So that means speeding up the recruitment process so you don’t miss out on the star talent. But how?

Using a professional recruiter is your best bet to getting what you need quickly

Whether you do the recruitment yourself or outsource it, a recruitment process costs money – the cost of your time versus the cost of paying someone else to do it while you get on with running your business. Research demonstrates the cost is about the same for most hiring briefs.

The big winner for you is time – a professional recruiter will get you a solid shortlist within days, whereas you might take weeks due to the pressures on your time. And a slow recruitment process pretty much guarantees missing out on the best candidates available in a buoyant market.

Professional recruiters have very attractive databases of already screened and job-ready candidates, as well as the skills and connections to quickly get a great job ad posted to multiple job boards within a couple of hours of taking your brief.

And there are various ways you can engage with a professional recruiter – from a full service option to an RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing) model where you just pay for the help you need. To find out more, read my blog about recruitment pricing options.

In the meantime…

If you want to speed up the recruitment process yourself

If using a professional recruiter isn’t your thing and you’d rather manage your recruitment yourself, here’s 7 great tips to help you get the people you want in the time frame you want – the right people in the right jobs at the right time.

1. Know exactly what skills and experience you’re looking for and what you want the person to do

If you’ve done a good business plan, you’ll know what skills and experience you’re needing to get to that next level. The next thing is to be clear about what you want the person to do. It’s no good hiring good accounting and admin skills if the person is actually going to be answering the phones in customer service. Clarity around exactly what you need to hire will make sure you can move quickly.

2. Make sure your ad copy is targeting the people you want to hire and isn’t just an essay about how great you are

Too often, job ads don’t engage the reader quickly enough. And this is usually because they are written from the writer’s perspective and not the target audience – in this case, your star candidate. A successful job ad has the following hallmarks:

Headlines and bullet points are enticing and succinct – they should encourage the reader to keep reading. A great strategy is to ask questions like “Are you looking for the next step in your career?” or “Want a great job close to home?”

Company blurbs are a single paragraph – enough to titillate rather than so dense candidates fall asleep reading it! Again, you want just enough to encourage them to keep reading.

The list of duties/responsibilities doesn’t read like a job description, rather it just highlights the 4-5 key parts of the role – long lists of duties infer an inflexible or uncreative employer. Not very inspiring for energetic, ambitious people.

The list of employee benefits are actually incentives beyond a salary – this is where you’d list things like staff discounts, free parking, flexible hours, etc.

There are contact details for the hiring manager – when you’re looking for the right person quickly, you may find them in the first 24 hours by giving them the chance to call you.

3. Be brutal creating your shortlist and start building it early

The most successful recruitment campaigns don’t wait for a week or two to see what applications come in. As soon as you see an application that looks strong, add it to your shortlist. When you get to five candidates who are strong on paper, you’re ready for the next step. Keep watching the applications and add the strongest to the list as you go.

4. Do a quick phone screen before scheduling F2F interviews

Face to face interviews take the most time in the recruitment process. So limit them to only those candidates that have already ticked a bunch of boxes. The best way to do this is conduct phone screening interviews with those that have made your initial shortlist. This is a great way to cover off on the “nuts and bolts” – location, availability, notice period required, salary expectations, motivation for applying for the job, etc. It’s also your chance to ‘test’ for verbal communication skills and energy and enthusiasm. If you like them on the phone, book the face to face interview while you’ve got them on the line.

5. Schedule F2F interviews quickly

Once you’ve identified your preferred candidates, get them in quickly for a F2F interview. And if you require a second person to be in the interview, get them locked in so you don’t have to run a second round of interviews. Most high quality candidates who are active in the job market are probably already interviewing elsewhere. Any delay leaves you open to them accepting another job and you missing out.

6. Use behavioural interviewing techniques – listen twice as much as you speak and steer clear of psychological traps

To make sure you find out everything you need to know about the suitability of a candidate for the job you’re recruiting for, be aware of the psychological traps interviewers often fall into and be sure to engage in a solid behavioural interview. Resist the temptation to do all the talking (another common mistake made by the uninitiated) and listen closely to the candidate responses, probing further when you need to.

7. Get your reference checks done and the offer of employment out as soon as you can

Again, time is of the essence here. Even if the interview has gone really well and the candidate is pumped, preferred candidates will not sit around waiting for a job offer. If you want the person, you need to act!

Speeding up the recruitment process is not as hard as it seems

Even if you’ve chosen not to use a professional recruiter to help you source the skilled people you need, you can still make sure you aren’t missing out on the right people for your organisation.

Being well prepared and carving out the time you’ll need to stay on top of the process is the first step. Then, once the applications start rolling in, don’t delay – shortlist, phone screen and interview within the shortest time frame you possibly can.

Happy hiring!