We were lucky to mistakenly receive an email from one of our clients that was meant for their internal hiring managers only. This was a large, fast moving consumer goods company and they very specifically outlined why taking soooooo long to fill open positions was hurting their company. We were lucky because this reinforced many of our concerns about working with this firm, and it was good to know they were concerned for the same reasons. Here is what they discussed:
Slow Hiring Costs Money
When a company takes more than 3-4 months to fill any open positions we always wonder, Who is doing the work? Either an existing employee is working too hard doing two jobs, or this company is losing productivity or even revenue. Slow hiring also increases the chance you will have to compete via salary for a candidate that has time to talk to many other companies.
Slow Hiring Can Negatively Impact Company Reputation
Companies who become known as “slow decision-makers” in their hiring process run the risk of having this perceived as their culture in the marketplace. There aren’t many ways for job seekers to learn about a company, and seeing an inept or indecisive hiring process becomes weighted with meaning. The worse the interview/hiring process, the less positive for the company’s reputation.
Slow Hiring Can Reduce a Firm’s Ability to Win Top Talent
Slow decision making definitely loses top candidates as they receive other offers and need to make a decision before the slow hiring firm even makes an offer. Top talent believes a company isn’t that interested or enthused in their candidacy because they take too long to react to competing offers. Slow-hiring companies lose these head-to-head battles. As the errant email said, “Slow hiring dampens internal energy around hiring talent.”
A very interesting statistic also noted on the email was that “anything over four interviews does not contribute substantive additional information to the candidate’s final evaluation/rating.”
Executive Recruiters, Smith Hanley Associates, can speed up your hiring process in the niche areas of marketing analytics, data science, direct and digital marketing, forecasting, market research, credit risk and information technology. Give Jacque Paige a call at 203-319-4300 or email her at jpaige@smithhanley.com. We will turn your turtle into a hare!
