If you’re trying to hire for different positions, you could be damaging your firm’s results in the hiring process. Slow hiring in periods of low employment could mean the best candidates will be taken before you can present your offer. When the economy is running at low unemployment, the competition for talent becomes fierce. On average, organizations take 24 days to complete an interview and up to 42 days to make a hire.
In this span of time, a sought-after candidate will get multiple compelling offers, so there’s a chance a competitor will snatch them and recruit them right away. To prevent this, your organization can adopt a fast hiring process. In the current economic environment, competing for talent means a company must field offers on the same week the interview takes place. This is why many organizations are embracing same-day hires.
To speed up the review process for candidates, you can pull out information about the candidates. Hiring a top performer boosts your productivity and could mean more profit, so it’s important to get it right when you come across a qualified candidate.
If you’re hiring in fast-paced industries such as transportation, security, or hospitality, your time-to-hire can directly impact your team’s efficiency. For instance, employers like Alaska Airlines, Allied Universal, and Buffalo Wild Wings often manage large workforces, where delays in hiring can cause immediate operational gaps.
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How Slow Hiring Can Hurt Your Business
Low unemployment can impact your hiring results, as bidding for the talent is stiff. Many top candidates not only receive multiple offers, but they also get compelling offers. With many great options on the table, not many candidates are going to wait for more than 20 days that it takes many firms in the U.S. to complete an interview. It can take 42 days to complete the hire, so timing is vital if you want to get the best candidates before competitors beat you to it.
Losing a top candidate is a multimillion mistake you should not make if you want your organization to thrive. One of the best options is to embrace same-day hiring, which is ideal as you can get the candidate before they get the chance to review offers from competitors.
This becomes even more critical for large organizations like AT&T or BNSF Railway, where onboarding delays can ripple across departments and teams. With their extensive hiring needs, reducing time-to-fill is a strategic necessity.
The old belief that you need to do slow hiring to get quality is proven ineffective. Top candidates will be off the market, as quality hires are a result of matching the interview and offering speed in the hiring process. A sought-after candidate will not sit and wait 23 days for your organization to make a move when they have other offers on the table.
The Different Variations of Same-Day Hiring
Depending on your firm’s capabilities and needs, there are different variations of same-day hiring you should consider:
- Same-Day Hiring. This is an aggressive approach in the hiring process. The process begins with scheduling the finalists for the all-day assessment. Once the assessment is completed, an offer is presented to the best candidate, most probably at the end of the day. Under this arrangement, the finalist is incented or encouraged to accept the offer before leaving. If you find it challenging to complete same-day hiring, you can try same-week hiring, where the finalists know the decision before the end of a week.
- Same-Day Offers. Often, most candidates find the long wait for the interview the most frustrating part of searching for a job. Giving a same-day offer means the candidate is able to review the deal to decide before they explore counter offers from competitors. This is important when looking for the best candidates in the field.
- Same-Day Interviews. This same-day hiring approach is easier to implement. Under this approach, you can schedule the interviews for the finalist candidates on the same day. So, the candidate assessment is done on the same day. Completing interviews on the same day makes it easy to compare candidates. Using this approach, you may choose the candidate several days later. You can explore a shorter variation of this approach, which includes same-evening interviews, where you squeeze the assessment into one work night evening.
- A National Hiring Day. This has become a popular approach that many organizations are using to get the top candidates. It publicizes the fact an organization is looking to hire thousands of employees on the same day. The same-day process is effective as it garners great publicity and a buzz on working at the firm. Also, it adds value, as hiring managers only need to focus on getting the right candidates on the same day.
Critical Features of a Same-Day Hiring Process
One of the concerns about same-day hiring is that it could result in fast but inaccurate decisions. To ensure the accuracy of same-day hiring, you can include a few critical success factor components:
- Get a Hiring Committee. To ensure quality improvement, you should consider using a hiring committee. Many hiring managers infrequently hire, which makes them prone to making mistakes. Companies like Intuit and Google have discovered a hiring committee is more consistent when it comes to fast hiring. Also, it’s easier to monitor the operations. This is the best option for accurate one-day decisions because the panel is composed of trained professionals with reduced biases and a keen eye for talent.
- Develop a Talent Pipeline for More Time for Assessment. Another component to consider when you present a job offer the same day as the interview is creating a talent pipeline that delivers more time for assessment. This helps you identify quality prospects before having an opening. A pre-need feature like this gives you enough lead time that helps you to assess and confirm the references of prospects slowly.
- Referrals for an Extra Layer of Assessment. It’s also important to use referrals from top-performing employees. You can populate same-day referrals from your top employees. This approach is effective if the employee has seen their work and assessed and recommended the candidate. Adding a layer of screening reduces the error rate.
- Hold Peer Interviews. You can add peer interviews into the process because you have the whole day to assess candidates. This is because coworkers are likely to identify potential toxic employees.
Many well-known employers, such as Casting Call, have used large-scale hiring events to gather attention and accelerate the recruitment funnel. These national or industry-specific hiring days often draw thousands of applicants and can help companies hire quickly while building employer brand awareness.
Benefits of Same-Day Hiring
Because there’s too much at stake when filling a position at your company, you should always follow a process that helps you get it right. These are some benefits your organization will enjoy when you embrace same-day hiring.
- Higher Percentage of Top Performers. There’s no data to prove that taking longer to fill a position improves the hiring quality. With speed, you can get more top performers, who would not still be available if you took longer. Also, if the candidate makes the acceptance decision quickly, you will end up with a decisive employee.
- Better Offer Acceptance Rates. A protracted hiring process can make potential employees question an organization’s ability to handle other decisions. So, demonstrating fast decision-making improves your image and can also boost offer acceptance rates. Besides, giving candidates a lot of time to think may raise doubts and questions. Because the hiring process can last all day, the candidate gets the time to know and like your team.
- Slash The Cost of Hiring. It’s evident the hiring process is expensive. Not only do hiring managers need to take time out of their schedules, but you also need to spend money on things like criminal background checks, job board postings, skills tests, and more. A good hire helps you avoid the added cost.
- Reduce Candidate Dropout Rate. One of the reasons candidates leave after the initial success is because the hiring process takes too long. You should tell the candidates upfront that you’ll make your decisions on the same day. This will excite them and convince them it’s not ideal to drop out. Also, you can mandate interviews on a day like Friday to ensure everyone is available for meetings.
- Impresses Candidates and Hiring Managers. Top candidates and the hiring managers will enjoy the process through same-day hiring. When you conduct quick hiring, the managers get better quality talent faster, and because this is completed quickly, the candidate can be back to their normal work.
- Improves Competitive Advantage. As the average time to fill a position is 42 days, concluding interviews and presenting the offer provides a competitive advantage over competitors. This is where “the early bird catches the worm” plays out.
Conclusion
Most managers have used slow hiring when searching for the best candidates, but this does not always work well. In times of low unemployment, an organization must move faster to get the right candidate. The intense competition means the best will not wait around for your slow hiring decision. When competition increases, the time to interview and fill a position must be made shorter.
