The 4 Things That Might Be Holding Up Your Recruitment

Is your recruitment process too slow? Is your time to hire longer than you’d like it to be? If so, there could be something standing in your way.

A time consuming recruitment process can be detrimental in many ways; you might find that your candidates get snapped up by your competitors before you have the chance to speak to them. Alternatively, you might notice that applicants become frustrated after not hearing from you.

This can also have financial implications; after all, the costs of having a vacancy in your business do stack up as time passes. Consider the costs associated with your staff covering another employee’s workload, the cost of the time spent interviewing candidates and the cost of having to re-advertise your vacancy if the previous run isn’t successful.

Put simply, when it comes to recruiting staff, time really is money.

Fortunately, there are many ways of identifying and remedying the hold-ups in your recruitment process, whether they’re caused by internal issues or wider market conditions.

So, what’s holding up your recruitment process? Webrecruit looks at four of the top factors that could be slowing your hiring down.

 

1. Your staff

If your hiring managers are waiting weeks to review applications, you run the risk of candidates going cold.

Using an applicant tracking system (ATS), such as Webrecruit ATS, helps to keep your hiring managers engaged in the recruitment process by sending them daily notifications of new applications and reminding them how many candidates they have in total to review.

With candidates only on the market for a short amount of time and competition for talent at an all-time high, reviewing applications quickly and progressing them along the recruitment pipeline is more important than ever.

An ATS will also empower your staff to follow up on new applications quickly by displaying how many ‘new applicants’ they have on their recruitment pipeline screen. They will clearly be able to see how many candidates are at each stage of the application process, including how many they have shortlisted.

 

2. Your processes

Digitalising your recruitment processes, such as new job requisitions and employee onboarding, can make it much easier to identify any hold-ups.

Recruitment software allows you to create custom vacancy requisition workflows that mimic your existing approvals processes. This means that you can keep track of where requisitions are being held up and run regular reports to see if there are any common reasons for delays across the business.

Webrecruit ATS also has an in-built onboarding module, which allows you to keep track of the onboarding process for new hires. At a glance, you can see what information is outstanding and how far through the onboarding process candidates are.

 

3. Your candidates (or lack of)

Nothing slows down a recruitment process quite like a lack of candidates.

To increase the amount of relevant candidates you attract with your job adverts, you need to make sure your advertising mix is right. Consider what job boards you’re using to advertise your roles; are there any specialist boards you could look at using? Are you using your company’s social media platforms effectively enough to reach potential candidates?

An ATS can help you to track which job boards are working the most effectively, which can help you to refine your advertising mix in the future.

It’s also important to provide a positive candidate experience to keep them engaged throughout the recruitment process and minimise any candidate drop-offs at application, interview, offer negotiation and onboarding stages. This can be achieved by ensuring that your entire recruitment process is seamless and candidates are kept updated regarding the status of their applications.

 

4. Your criteria

Are your applicant numbers still low? Try looking at your job advert and re-visiting the amount of ‘essential’ criteria you are asking for.

By asking for a dream ‘wish list’ of skills and experience from your applicants, you are more than likely putting many suitable people off applying. Females won’t apply for a job if they do not meet 100% of the essential criteria listed in your job advert, whereas men would apply if they met 60% of the criteria, research from Harvard Business Review suggests.

If you’re struggling to attract applicants and your vacancy has a long list of essential criteria, try reducing your list slightly to open it up to more candidates who might be suitable for your vacancy.

 

Are you looking for more ways to speed up your recruitment process? Book a demo of Webrecruit ATS to find out how our recruitment software and accompanying online advertising solutions can help to simplify your hiring.



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