Five Recruitment Strategies To Speed Up Your Hiring Process

A recent survey from the NFIB research foundation found that 93% of small business owners reported few to no qualified applicants for positions they were actively trying to fill – an all-time high. Which is why recruitment strategies that cut time to hire in the era of the Great Resignation and Turnover Tsunami are key to speeding up hiring.

Companies have become creative over the last few years as they have overcome staffing challenges caused by the pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war, and supply chain issues. However, these solutions are more often a band-aid as opposed to a long-term strategy. In order to remain competitive, companies must rethink their recruitment strategies, prioritizing speed and candidate experience.

Here are some ways we at interviewstream and our clients have restructured our interview processes to promote candidate experience and cut hiring times.

Be Clear in Your Job Description

Upgrade your job description to get your candidates’ attention. The job description itself should be concise, with the position’s responsibilities clearly outlined. Make sure you highlight what makes your company unique – such as culture and work schedule. 

Also include the benefits that candidates are going to be most interested in. Candidates gloss over “health, dental, vision, and 401K” because it is at the end of nearly every job description. This isn’t a game of high-stakes poker – don’t hide your Ace. Show off your most popular and sought-after benefits, such as tuition reimbursement, profit sharing, and unlimited vacation.

Screen Out Unqualified Candidates

You may be hurting for staff, but that doesn’t mean you can afford to lower your standards. You still need top talent to bring optimal productivity and longevity to your company. To ensure you are bringing qualified candidates through the advanced stages of the interview process, consider using an assessment tool to screen candidates.

In your job posting, make sure your candidates know that in addition to their cover letter and resume, they also will need to complete an assessment screening before their application is completed. 

If the assessment is left incomplete or if the candidate does not pass, then they are automatically sent a “Sorry, we’ve moved on to another candidate” email. Both recruiters and candidates appreciate not wasting more time than necessary on figuring out that a position is not the right fit.

Automate, Automate, Automate 

Recruiters spend an average of 42 days filling an open position according to the Society of Human Resources. To get to top talent first, you need to speed up your recruitment. There’s no time to spare when updating candidates manually by text, email, phone call, or carrier pigeon at every step of the process. And if you don’t update your candidates, they will likely lose interest in your interview process and drop off.

Automate as much of the communication as you can. Keep some correspondence personal, for example, the communication after they have an in-person interview. But in the initial phases, automate your process to let your candidates know that you did receive their completed application and whether or not they will advance to a more in-depth screening. Recruiting requires a personal touch, but to save time you need to automate when you can.

Send Your Candidates a Text Message – Seriously

It may feel like you are crossing a work-life boundary by sending a candidate a text message. However, the up-and-coming workforce (known as Generation Z) is the most tech savvy generation of our times and appreciates tech forward approach to recruiting.

Adding texting to your recruitment strategy increases your chance of getting a response from potential candidates while automating your hiring process. Using a text-based recruiting feature allows you to set up text messages to go straight from your computer to candidates’ phones. 

Not only can you open this line of communication, you can also text multiple candidates at once, send them invitations for one-way screening interview (more about that in a minute), and set up reminders for candidates to complete their application if they don’t complete it within 24 hours.

Screening with Video Interviews

One of the best time-saving recruitment strategies is to screen qualified candidates right away. With video interviews, you can send a link to your candidate for them to complete a one-way video interview when it’s convenient for them. Typically candidates respond within the first 48 hours.

This makes the recruiting and hiring process faster for both the recruiter and the candidate. As soon as a candidate is flagged as qualified, they can record their answers to screening questions. The recruiters are then notified when that is completed and can immediately move forward in the hiring process. Companies who use this technology in the screening process typically see over a 50% reduction in time-to-offer.

Decrease Hiring Times With interviewstream

It’s a job seeker’s market right now and top talent doesn’t stay available for long. You cannot rely on recruitment strategies from five years ago to carry your team to a full roster. Modernizing your strategy and using the right technology is going to be your best bet to decrease your time-to-hire and time-to-fill.

If you don’t know where to start or need extra support in modernizing your hiring process to get the right people in the right roles faster, reach out to our hiring experts today.

About The Author

Caroline Chessia is the Marketing Operations Specialist at interviewstream. She loves color-coordinated graphs, hiking in the mountains, and every dog she meets—especially the Golden Retrievers.