Time-to-hire is an important recruiting metric to consider when it comes to the recruiting team and hiring process.
The period of days needed to complete the hiring process is known as time-to-hire. Therefore, time-to-hire starts from the day an applicant applies for a job and ends when the company hires the employee and sends an employment letter.
As a result, you will have two pieces of information from the time-to-hire process. They are: candidate experience and recruiting efficiency.
The length of time it takes to hire someone also reflects on their experience. If you were a potential employee and had the option, you would pick a two-week recruiting period over a two-month one. An improved candidate experience will come from a shorter time to recruit.
The time-to-hire indicator tracks how promptly a candidate is reviewed, evaluated, invited for an interview, and hired. A lengthy hiring procedure is a sign of a complex, inefficient process.
With this information, it is possible to answer the following questions that will help to make the hiring process better and faster.
Information extracted from these questions can help the company look for loopholes and fix them. If a company can smooth the process of recruiting and make the process fast, it becomes beneficial for the company itself.
Another important HR metric is time-to-fill. However, time-to-hire and time-to-fill are two related but different aspects. Time-to-hire is about the timing that is needed to track the speed of the hiring process of any company since any candidate. In contrast, features of time-to-fill help to ensure realistic business planning.
Even before starting the hiring process, the management needs to know when to start the process and the right moment to publish a hiring notice so that candidates can initiate applying and enter the hiring pipeline.
As a result, both time-to-fill and time-to-hire are important metrics to consider, as hiring is a complex operation with too many external influences. After analyzing the external influences, for example, job location, labor market, timing, time-to-fill information, when to start the hiring process, and time-to-hire, ensure that the hiring process is going smoothly and fast.
A candidate slate is a list of qualified people for an open position. The hiring team usually waits for a few weeks so that candidates can apply for the position, and they can select five to seven people to interview.
Maintaining a candidate slate and starting the interview process as soon as you find a minimum number of candidates is important to make the time-to-hire period shorter. Although there are other factors to consider in the hiring process, such as assessment and the interview process, the hiring team should be attentive to creating a candidate slate first thing during the hiring process.
This is done with the concept that you need a comparison unless you have extensive knowledge of the position you are hiring for. The criterion for making a wise decision is having five to eight prospects.
Exceptionally, if the recruiting manager has made three or more similar hires in the previous two years. In this situation, these interviews provide the standard you need, so there is no reason to hold off till you have a new slate.
The average time to hire is different depending on the job location/country, the field of work, and the job market. For example, in the engineering sector, the average time-to-hire in the USA and Canada is 28 days, whereas in Asian countries, the time is 25 days.
Again, 24 days is the time-to-hire period for IT/design job recruitment in the UK and Ireland, while in Europe, it is 32 days. As different factors are responsible for a different timeline of time-to-hire, there is no exact or ideal timeline for it. However, globally, the average timeline can range from 21 to 30 days.
The steps of time-to-hire are given below:
Here are some ideas you should take into consideration for shortening the hiring process if your regular time to hire is significantly higher than industry averages or those of other companies in your area:
You can decide on a recommended and optimum number of days for every stage of the recruitment pipeline. Analyzing the discrepancy between the ideal and actual number of days is made simple as a result.
You know from the hiring funnel that processing applicants takes a long time before the initial evaluation. Therefore, setting a goal will set your pace in the process.
If hiring for different departments is slowing down the hiring process of your company, you need to break down the segments according to different departments or positions and schedule them at different times.
Keeping track of each stage of your hiring funnel is the first step in enhancing your time-to-hire statistics. This is often maintained in the applicant tracking system, but it can also be quickly documented in an Excel file for a few candidates.
Pre-selection techniques are evaluations that assist in spotting qualified applicants as they apply. By doing this, interviews and phone intakes for applicants who wouldn't go past the screening stage are avoided. In this approach, the hiring team may focus more of their time and energy on the candidates that have the best chance of success.
Narrowing your search to fewer, better candidates can help accelerate the recruiting process because you will have less competition. High-quality job descriptions and displaying a Practical Job Preview before application submission are two strategies for achieving this.