What is hiring time and why is it important?

In recruiting operational roles, speed is crucial when hiring and training new employees. The longer a candidate waits to receive a response or is in a lengthy recruitment process, the more chances of losing them to the competition.

A faster recruitment process reduces overtime and keeps productivity high. One way to track the efficiency of your recruitment process is to measure hiring time. Let's develop everything you need to know about hiring time, including how to reduce it.

What is hiring time?

Hiring time is the total time between when the candidate applies for the position and accepts the job offer.

How to calculate hiring time

If you don't use an ATS or other technological recruitment tools, you'll need to manually create a list of each candidate that has been hired and take note of two dates: 1) the day they submitted their application and 2) the day they accepted the job offer. The hiring time for each person is the number of days between those dates.

For example:

Employee A applies for a vacancy on October 1 and accepts the offer on October 19, so the hiring time for employee A is 18 days.

You can also measure average hiring time by calculating the sum of the hiring times of all new employees and dividing it by the number of new employees. For example:

Employee A hiring time: 18 days

Employee B hiring time: 20 days

Employee C hiring time: 15 days

Average hiring time= (18 days + 20 days + 15 days)/3 employees

Average hiring time = 17.7 days

Why is hiring time an important recruitment metric?

This metric is a crucial way to measure the efficiency of your recruitment process. If your average hiring time is too long, it can indicate larger organizational problems, such as a poor or non-existent recruitment strategy. The result is that the recruitment team is having difficulty completing the Pipeline with a stable flow of candidates.

What is the difference between hiring time and time of filling a vacancy?

Recruitment time and vacancy time are often used interchangeably. However, they are different in that the hiring time measures the time between when applications are submitted and the employment offer is accepted, and the time of filling the vacancy is the time between when the vacancy is posted and the new employee accepts the offer.

Both metrics are important because each one measures different elements related to your recruitment process. For example, if you have a relatively short hiring time but the vacancy filling time is long, it could indicate that there may be a problem with posting the vacancy. In this case, you could review the job description to ensure that it is attractive, adequate, transparent and that it highlights the great advantages of working at your company, or you could check if the employment exchange you are using works according to your expectations.

What is the ideal hiring time?

In general, most companies should aim for a hiring time of between 7-10 days. But this can vary depending on the industry, location, or specific roles. For example, filling specialized health care roles with good candidates tends to take longer than filling entry-level roles in restaurants.

To put a little perspective, a A recent study shows that among 15 specialties, engineering has the highest hiring time at 49 days while administrative positions take a time of around 33 days.

What causes the hiring time to be long?

So, if you're one of the many companies that don't meet the expected hiring time for your industry, you should ask yourself, why? The following organizational challenges may lead to a longer average hiring time.

Lack of recruitment process and lots of manual steps

Companies without an armed recruitment process will have a longer hiring time than those that have systems. This is because every time a vacancy opens, the recruitment team is stuck without a system to rely on. They have to start with basic recruitment efforts, writing job descriptions (which takes you the 65% of the HR team two hours or more by publication), deciding where to publish, trying to promote them, among others.

If you do a lot of manual tasks, operational tasks can take up most of your time. A study conducted by Ladders shows that recruitment managers pass About seven seconds reviewing each CV. For mass recruiters who review dozens or hundreds of applications per day, this translates to hours of their time per week. Also, consider the time it takes to contact candidates with interview reminders or answer basic questions about the position or application process.

Teams can save a great deal of time by taking advantage of automated technology to complete these tasks. Hay automated recruitment platforms who can filter CVs and requests, automate follow-up emails with templates, and use chatbots to send reminders or updates.

Recruiting process is too complex

Sometimes the problem isn't a lot of manual tasks, but rather a lot of unnecessary tasks. Do you really need two or more rounds of interviews before choosing a new employee? Is it absolutely necessary to subject candidates to multiple skill evaluations that are not related to the job?

These steps can be demotivating for qualified candidates and can prolong the recruitment process unnecessarily. If you haven't reviewed your recruitment strategies in the last quarter, you may find steps (such as those mentioned above) that can be eliminated.

How to improve hiring time

Improving hiring time not only reduces costs and time, but can also reduce the risk of losing the best talent. Here are four steps you can implement to improve hiring time:

1) Analyze your recruitment metrics

There are many metrics besides hiring time, such as candidate satisfaction, candidates by source, and candidate abandonment rate.

For example, when determining candidate satisfaction (CSS) through surveys, you might find that candidates think your application process is too long or repetitive. This reflects a weak point in the process that you can identify and resolve.

2) Automate the filtering process

Filtering applications and CVs manually is one of the most time-consuming recruitment tasks. Consider automating this process using AI software to identify desirable keywords, sentences, or characteristics. This will help recruitment teams narrow down a large group of good candidates to a smaller group with the best candidates.

3) Interact with candidates as soon as possible

Most sources suggest that candidates wait a week or two after submitting an application, although it usually takes longer. 44% of candidates report that they are contacted by the company within a few weeks of applying. 37% are contacted within a week and only 4% on the day.

And most candidates say that waiting too long to be contacted in the application process is extremely frustrating. The faster you respond, the better chance you have of winning the candidate as an employee. A quick response time will also help to reduce recruitment time and the time to fill the vacancy. The key is to reduce the time between each step of the process with faster responses.

4) Reduces back and forth in communication

Coordinating the agenda between interviewers and candidates can be a big challenge in mass recruitment. The automated chatbots that connect your recruitment software can be a good way to reduce the time it takes to and from schedule an interview. When a candidate reaches the interview stage, you can have your chatbot provide them with a list of times available for them to choose from. When they select the day and time, the chatbot can automatically add it to the recruitment manager's calendar, without disagreements.

Chatbots can also answer candidates' questions about the application process, the status of their application, or the information they need about the company. This way, candidates can resolve their concerns quickly and effectively, without the need to prolong the review phase.

Benefits of reducing hiring time

Reducing hiring time brings many benefits in addition to filling vacancies more quickly. It can help with onboarding, retention, budgeting and more.

Let's explore three of the best benefits of reducing hiring time.

1) Acquire strong candidates quickly (before the competition)

Not only are you looking to fill vacancies quickly, but also with a high quality of recruitment. When you reduce hiring time, you'll respond to requests, schedule interviews, and send job offers to candidates quickly. This means that you can keep the best talent before they look for another job.

Winning candidates quickly means you'll beat your competition, which is crucial in difficult or highly specialized markets. Don't let the competition beat you in the talent attraction game. Adjust your hiring time so you can recruit the best talent quickly.

2) Reduce costs and save time

The longer the hiring time, the more you'll spend on recruitment work hours, recruitment costs, and human resource management. Teams with vacant roles will work overtime to fill those vacancies, which creates another cost. Reducing hiring time helps you reduce all of these costs.

3) Improves the candidate experience

Focusing on the candidate experience is increasingly important and one of the reasons is the prevalence of mobile devices. According to Glassdoor, the 58% of users search and apply for jobs from their phones. One way to improve the candidate experience is to facilitate the application with their devices. Tedious applications that are not adapted to the mobile version can be unfriendly and frustrating for the user.

Recruitment processes that are long and complex, the lack of empathy throughout the process and the long waits between answers are the biggest problems that scare candidates away. Make your process easy and simple to fill your vacancies quickly.

Speed up your hiring time with Emi

Are you ready to start improving your recruitment process and reduce time-consuming tasks to hire the best candidates faster? Emi can help you. Our platform offers solutions for the entire recruitment process: automated candidate filtering, tools for scheduling interviews powered by machine learning, metrics to help you measure your performance, and more.

The best way to learn how we can help you reduce your hiring time is request a demo here.

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