Recruitment Blog

How to maintain efficiency throughout the hiring process

Sarah Linney

Content Marketing Manager at JobAdder

Hiring efficiency, also known as recruitment efficiency, is the key to attracting, engaging and securing the best candidates for your organisation.

There are several moving parts in the hiring process. The companies that guide the candidate through these phases most efficiently will win in the long run. Keeping candidates engaged throughout the application, evaluation, interview and onboarding process will ensure you make an excellent first impression.

While you want to be as efficient as possible, you also want to make a great hire. Here’s how you can boost your hiring efficiency without compromising your hiring accuracy.

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What is hiring efficiency and why does it matter?

Hiring efficiency measures the speed, cost, and seamlessness from the initial job opening to the candidate’s successful onboarding. Organisations should strive to fill their roles with the best talent, but they want to do it as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

Key indicators such as time to hire, hiring costs, and the success rate of job offers are instrumental in assessing hiring efficiency. Once an organisation comprehends these metrics, it can introduce targeted process enhancements to optimise and expedite its recruitment procedures, ultimately ensuring a more effective and productive hiring journey.

The benefits of hiring faster

Apart from building a top-notch organisation, below are some of the many reasons why your business would want to hire faster and more efficiently.

Streamlining the recruitment process ensures the prompt onboarding of highly qualified candidates, bolstering the efficacy of your talent acquisition endeavours.

A swifter and well-structured recruitment approach not only secures the right candidates for key positions but also cultivates a positive employer brand, projecting an image of professionalism and respect for potential employees.

Save time, money and resources

When you streamline your hiring process, you will save hiring costs and time for those involved. The less time your team spends researching, screening and recruiting candidates, the more time they will have to enhance the business. A vacant role is also costly to the company, so filling it as soon as possible benefits the organisation in the long run.

With an effective recruitment strategy, strategic use of social media platforms like LinkedIn, and insightful assessments, you can pinpoint candidates who not only possess the necessary skills but also exhibit a strong cultural fit with your company. By minimising delays in bringing in new employees, you not only reduce the financial strain caused by prolonged vacancies but also capitalise on fresh talent to drive innovation and growth.

Retain access to top talent

The best professionals will not be on the job market for long, so your company needs a hiring process that gains access to them quickly. When your company drags out an inefficient hiring process, the candidate may get scooped up by another company.

Utilising advanced recruitment software can expedite resume screening and initial assessments, allowing your human resources team to swiftly identify and engage with potential candidates for your open positions. By promptly presenting opportunities to these sought-after individuals, your company increases its chances of securing their interest and preventing the loss of talent to competitors seeking to fill new job roles.

Maintain a great candidate experience

Not only should the hiring process be efficient, but it should also properly engage job seekers to leave a good first impression. Although the candidate is selling themself to your company, your company is also selling itself. A quality hiring process will increase your chances of hiring and onboarding more motivated employees.

Additionally, implementing a referral program and utilising advanced recruitment tools can enhance the candidate experience further, showcasing your company’s commitment to fostering a supportive and collaborative environment from the very outset. This positive interaction not only boosts your chances of successful hiring but can also contribute to improved retention rates as employees who felt engaged during the hiring process are more likely to remain committed and enthusiastic about their roles.

Increased acceptance rates

In addition to top talent, an efficient hiring process will also boost the chances of a candidate accepting your offer. When you make the process more efficient, the candidate is less likely to entertain other offers. The best hiring processes will engage with the client in all phases, which will leave a positive impression for when the offer letter comes.

A streamlined hiring journey that keeps candidates informed and engaged while aligning their expectations with the company’s values and objectives ensures that the final offer aligns seamlessly with their aspirations. This alignment created throughout the process significantly heightens the probability of a successful offer acceptance, contributing to a smoother transition for the candidate into their new role and enhancing overall satisfaction within the organisation.

Recruitment process bottlenecks: Where does hiring become inefficient?

There are a lot of components that go into a solid hiring process, so there are several opportunities for inefficiencies to arise. The best companies will identify these process gaps and then integrate improvements to elevate the candidate experience. Below are some of the critical bottlenecks to watch out for in the hiring process.

Not casting a wide enough net: There are numerous job boards available to job seekers on the internet. While some websites may be better suited to your needs, your company needs to advertise your openings on as many job boards as possible. Identify where your ideal candidate is likely to hang out, and then post your job ads on those channels.
Posting inaccurate job descriptions: To attract the top candidates, you want to be clear, concise and accurate with your job descriptions. If job seekers perceive any “false advertising” in your job postings, it could harm your brand. As you write your job descriptions, ensure it covers the goals for the role, the key tasks and responsibilities and how the role will fit in with the rest of the organisation.
Scheduling interviews: Scheduling interviews can be another bottleneck because of unnecessary communication between the candidate and the hiring manager. To eliminate this back-and-forth, your company should implement an automatic scheduling tool. That way, the candidate can check their schedule and secure a time that aligns with the hiring manager’s availability.
Prolonging the interview process: Dragging out the interview process will increase the likelihood that another company will secure your top candidate first. You should make sure that each interview stage is necessary and adds value. If there are opportunities to group stakeholders together for an interview, it could eliminate extra interview phases.
Understaffing your recruitment team: A hiring process has several moving parts, which will require a reliable group of recruitment team members to facilitate the process. As your company grows, you’ll need to assess the right time to bring on new recruiters. Ensure each team member has a value-added role that boosts efficiency throughout the process.
Hiring surges or slumps: Hiring surges or slumps occur when there are extreme changes in the labour market, which rapidly increases or decreases the number of applicants. Your team of recruiters and hiring managers needs to have systems in place to account for these abrupt changes in the job market landscape, particularly in regards to your candidate sourcing strategies.

Increasing hiring efficiency while maintaining hiring accuracy

Your company could have the most efficient hiring process in the world. However, it means nothing if you don’t hire with accuracy. Hiring accuracy is when your company hires a candidate that successfully fulfils the role, adds value to the company and stays for a substantial amount of time. Below are some of the behaviours and strategies to achieve high hiring accuracy.

Nurture your talent pipeline

Developing relationships with candidates is a process that requires several touch points and consistently building trust. Once you cast a wide net and build a large talent pool, your team must nurture those job seekers throughout the hiring process. This concept also applies to past candidates who were passed up for a job. While they may not have been the right fit then, they could be the perfect fit down the road.

Diversify your candidate pool

When you diversify your candidate pool, it will increase the chances of you securing a quality candidate. Each person has something unique to offer, which is why it’s essential to keep your options open. Your candidate pool should reflect your organisation. The more diverse your team is, the more likely your company is to innovate.

Make hiring decisions with input from multiple team members

While you don’t want to overcomplicate the process, you should get hiring input from multiple team members. Each person has a different role in the organisation, which means different perspectives. The new role could impact groups in different ways, which is why you need to consult multiple leaders in the organisation. Conversations can play out very differently in interviews amongst team members so it’s a great insight to get.

Interview remotely early on

If you want to move the candidate efficiently through the hiring process, you should interview remotely early on. Your company is most likely competing with other companies, which is why you want to get out in front first. Interviewing remotely will allow your team to make a connection, build trust and guide the job seeker through the hiring process, without dealing with any of the physical limitations of an in-person interview.

Focus on creating a great candidate experience

It’s important to make a good first impression. Your company’s brand is always on display when you interact with candidates, customers, vendors and other external stakeholders. Your team should focus on maximising each interaction and being transparent throughout the entire process. Here are some other ways to elevate the candidate experience:

Send a follow-up email after each interview to thank the candidate
Provide helpful information on the company or role
Keep candidates in the loop on scheduling changes
Train your team members to be personable and approachable throughout the hiring process

Utilise automation wherever possible

Using automation throughout the hiring process will save you time and money. Here are some ways your organisation can automate the hiring process:

If you have hundreds of candidates, you can pre-screen them through videos that are pre-recorded
Optimise the scheduling process by using automated calendar booking like Calendly
Recruit from everywhere through useful mobile recruiting applications
Use a recruitment CRM and applicant tracking system to organise your candidates

How to measure hiring efficiency

When it comes to hiring, data tells an important story. Recruiting metrics not only provide insights on how your hiring process is performing but also give your hiring team direction as to where things went wrong. It also communicates the strong components of your recruitment efforts, and how you can double down on those to enhance the overall recruiting strategy.

Time to hire: These recruiting metrics define how long elapses between the start of the recruiting process and when you hire the candidate. This will track the seamlessness and speed of your hiring process and how quickly you fill open roles.
Quality of hire: This is critical because it evaluates the value a new hire will bring to your company. While finding this number could be challenging, some of the examples are sales quotas, customer satisfaction ratings and the number of units produced.
Job offer acceptance rate: This metric determines the percentage of candidates that accept your job officer, divided by the total number of candidates.

Increase your hiring efficiency with JobAdder

JobAdder’s CRM and ATS is designed to transform your hiring process, adding joy back to the job of recruitment and ensuring you secure the best talent for your organisation.

Our software focuses on increasing hiring efficiency, from automated job posting to over 200 job boards to AI and skill matching candidates, a centralised hub for all communications, interview scheduling, notes sharing, background checking and much more.

We’ve finished with a hard sell because we know that our software can dramatically improve your hiring efficiency, here are a few stats from our clients to back us up: