Good talent is difficult to find whether the economy is
strong or the economy is less than stellar. The notion that a bad economy
allows a hiring manager to slow the process is false. In the famous words of Sheldon
Cooper from the Big Bang Theory…Relativity was a great idea.
This is a notion and a rather sucky one at that.
There are several negative consequences of a slow hiring
processes. Here are a few.
You could possibly lose top candidates during the late
stages of your recruitment process — when gainfully employed top
candidates decide to explore opportunities, they are likely to be quickly
contacted with prospects and offers, which means that often they will only be
on the job market for a matter of weeks or less.
An extended hiring process does not improve the
quality of the hire — One could think that taking more time to
make a hiring decision would result in better hires...because you had more time
to gather information, to gather feedback, and to mull over the finalists.
Unfortunately, slow hiring has the opposite effect. The longer you take, often
the lower the quality will be. The primary reason for this drop off, as
mentioned in the first section, is that with an extended hiring process, all of
the top candidates will likely drop out.
You will lose revenue and productivity because vacant
positions are open for too long — a stretched-out hiring
processes means that vacant positions go unfilled for months. Each day a
position is vacant has a significant dollar impact on productivity, innovation,
and revenue generation.
You potentially may have to pay new hires more in
salary because they will have other offers — If you have an extended
hiring process, there will be ample time for other firms to recruit these same
top candidates. And once multiple firms start fighting over and literally
bidding on one of your candidates, their salary demands will invariably increase
once they realize their true market value.
Your image of being slow decision-makers will cause
you to lose many top prospects —The appearance of slow decision-making
will damage your hiring results. This is because many top candidates view the
long time it takes a firm to reach a hiring decision as a reflection of the
corporate culture and what business decision-making is actually like.
Your employees will also feel the negative impacts of
slow hiring —Your employees will be asked to do double duty and/or
overtime, which will negatively impact their morale and retention rates.
Employees who came from other faster-hiring firms will get frustrated because
they know that these extended vacancies aren’t necessary.
If you are targeting “passive candidates,” realize
that slow hiring may result instead in the hiring of actives — The
passive candidate may take a longer time to decide whether to explore your
opportunity, but hiring managers must realize that once they indicate even a
potential interest in your opportunity you have to move fast to keep the
momentum and interest rolling. An extended hiring processes will give you a low
probability of securing these highly desirable passive candidates.
Because slow recruiting processes are not capable of hiring these targeted
passives, firms with slow hiring processes typically end up with most of their
hires coming from the active job seeker pool. But even then, slow hiring
decisions means that you will likely lose the best from among these active job
seekers.
Scot Dickerson, CPC
President Capstone Search
President Capstone Search
