Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire
The No. 1 Solution to Avoid the Hidden Costs of Slow Hiring

The No. 1 Solution to Avoid the Hidden Costs of Slow Hiring

Hiring budget. It’s an almost cringe-worthy term. It’s the cap that doesn’t budge when you’re trying to grow your team no matter what the state of the market. And the actual costs of hiring are often unclear to hiring teams.

They are aware of their hiring budget and with some experience, know how far it can get them when sourcing and hiring new talent. However, the costs associated with unreliable technology, scheduling conflicts, ineffective collaboration, poor hiring decisions, candidate dropout, and offer rejection rates are – sometimes devastatingly – overlooked.

Many of those challenges are often connected to the same source: a slow hiring process. 

Fortunately, boosting speed to hire can be simple with the right strategy and hiring tools in place. Take a look at some of the ways your hiring budget is wearing thin and what you can do to reduce hiring costs associated with slow hiring.

High candidate drop-out

The candidate experience matters. When your hiring process is too slow, candidates are more likely to drop out, meaning you lose access to high-quality candidates who can make a difference for your bottom line.

An average of 80% of candidates drop out during the application process. That’s right, just 20% of the applicants you attract to your open roles reach your initial screening process. And of those candidates, only 20% are likely to be offered an invitation to interview. Your talent selection is already significantly thinner at this stage, but time and resources have been spent sourcing, recruiting, and reviewing resumes.

Not only do you need top-quality candidates to make it through to your offer stage, but those who drop out due to a poor candidate experience are also more likely to think poorly of your brand. This can affect everything from customer satisfaction and retention to your brand reputation on social networks where you source new hires.

When candidates have to wait too long for your hiring team to follow up or the interview process is too complicated or impersonal, it reflects poorly on your company culture and leadership. 

Those who do make it through your hiring process may enter your workforce with little trust or respect for your processes. They could even be less invested in your company and have their mind made up at the offer they will take the next available opportunity to get out, increasing your new hire attrition and employee turnover.

Here’s what you can do:

Improving the candidate experience means different things to different companies. Even different industries have their own standards for how quickly candidates can expect the hiring process. One fact that holds true for all candidates however is clear and timely communication makes a tremendous difference in the candidate experience.

To reduce candidate dropout from the start of the hiring process, you can include video introductions from your careers page through the interview process. Candidates appreciate the personal connection they develop through seeing recruiters and hiring managers ask video interview questions or just share information about the team and company culture.

Video messages can be used to share a clear timeline with candidates and details about the hiring process, team, or job for a deeper understanding of what to expect. Keeping candidates informed keeps them engaged and helps them feel valued in your hiring process. 

Low offer acceptance rates

There’s always going to be another offer. Candidates apply to multiple companies at one time. In fact, it’s recommended they apply to several jobs a day when actively on the job hunt.

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if your offer is better…if it’s not in first, you lose the opportunity to extend it. And as previously mentioned, you can also dissuade candidates from accepting your offer based on their experience in your slow or inadequate hiring process. 

The current offer acceptance rate is just 66%, according to recent NACE data. This means more than a third of the candidates you invest in during the hiring process from application to offer will reject your final bid for their employment. With the average cost of hire totaling over $4k, that is a hard hit to your hiring budget. 

When candidates decline your offers, you’re back to the drawing board, especially if silver-medal candidates already moved on. For many companies with lower hiring budgets, the impact of starting the hiring process over and keeping seats empty longer can be devastating.

Here’s what you can do:

Since the Great Resignation, candidate expectations have remained high. In fact, it’s likely everything from the interview experience through employment will continue to evolve to meet the demands of talent today. One way you can get candidates on board with your offers is to show them your company values their time and consideration.

One-way video interviews are a great way to give candidates the opportunity to show their merit from stage one of the hiring process. Not only do candidates have a unique opportunity to share their personality and experience first-hand, but they can also do it on their own time. Negating scheduling conflicts speeds up the hiring process and moves top talent on to offers quickly and conveniently.

HR/Hiring manager burnout

Long hiring processes lead to burnout. Unfortunately, no one on your team is exempt from the impacts of hiring fatigue. HR and recruiter burnout is at an all-time high. In fact, a startling 98% of HR professionals in a Workvivo study report feeling burned out and more than 75% say they’d be open to a new job.

What’s more, that stress trickles down through the organization. Nearly a third of hiring managers report always feeling burned out at work according to Gallup. They cite reasons such as unclear expectations, heavy workload and distractions, job stress and frustrations, and less focus on their strengths as key contributors.

It’s hard to support managers and empower them to do their best work when they are caught in a spinning wheel of sluggish hiring decisions. A long or slow hiring process reduces productivity and over-taxes team leaders. The cost of replacing these team members can be devastating to your hiring budget.

Here’s what you can do:

Scheduling conflicts make it challenging for HR and hiring teams to connect to collaborate over hiring decisions. Team collaboration, when it comes to inviting new team members to your company, is critical for making quality hiring decisions. However, it can be time-consuming and complicated to manage with busy workloads.

Video interview software mitigates much of the frustration for HR professionals and hiring managers by making it easy to review candidate interviews and share feedback autonomously. One-way video interviews can be shared with all hiring stakeholders to weigh in on the same interview without having to be present.

If in-person and panel interviews need to be scheduled when a key stakeholder isn’t available onsite, live video interviews make it possible to meet with candidates from anywhere. Additionally, live interviews are automatically recorded, making it easier to share with hiring managers at a more convenient time. 

Providing and sharing interview evaluation feedback from everyone in one place makes it simple to come to collaborative decisions about who to advance and speeds up the hiring process. This means HR and hiring managers can get back to their priority tasks faster, preventing backlogs that burn team leaders out. 

Employee burnout

Employees are also at risk for burnout when it takes too long to fill an empty seat. They have to pick up the slack, and problem-solve on their own while hiring managers/HR are distracted by the hiring process. Especially if your company has a high turnover rate, keeping employees in this environment long-term can cultivate a negative employee experience.

The cost of turnover is significant compared to the cost of hiring a new employee, considering now you have two or more additional seats to fill. Once this cycle starts, it can be hard to get your team back to full capacity and recover your company culture. It can be avoided, however. A study by Harvard Business Review found that 80% of employee turnover can be traced back to a bad hiring decision.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a bad hire can cost an employer upwards of 30% of that employee’s first-year salary. Add this to the cost of leaving a set empty longer, at an average of $98 a day by Zippia’s calculations, most companies can hardly afford to replace one lost employee.

Here’s what you can do:

Generally, anything you do to improve speed to hire will relieve the burden from your current staff. The faster you fill empty seats, the more evenly distributed the workloads. In addition, hiring managers are more available and help troubleshoot and engage teams when not encumbered by a slow hiring process.

While the tools and strategies you use to speed up hiring don’t directly impact most employees, there are steps you can take to reduce employee burnout and turnover. As you work to improve your time to hire, be sure to keep employees informed of the steps you’re taking and how close you are to landing a new hire.

You can also get employees involved by asking for their input when creating job descriptions to improve the accuracy of required skills and culture fit. Employees can record testimonials and team introductions to help improve the candidate experience and offer acceptance rates. And in some cases, you may even have team members sit in on interviews or offer feedback in evaluations.

Whatever you do, don’t overlook your current team’s needs or input when hiring new talent. Continue to nurture employee relationships and reinforce their value so their employee reviews are authentic and positive.

Poor brand reputation

Candidates and employees who experience the drain and drawbacks of your slow hiring process and poor hiring decisions are likely to lose trust and interest in your company. Depending on the severity of the circumstances, they may even share their poor experience with others. The impact on your brand reputation can be crushing.

A survey by CareerArc found that 82% of candidates consider employer brand and reputation before applying for a job. The majority of people would abandon the application process if they read a negative review online. And odds are, they are going to find them.

Talentegy found 69% of candidates would share a negative candidate experience with others and word spreads fast in today’s age of technology. Fortunately, they also found that 82% of candidates would share a positive candidate experience.

Even better, 75% of people who had a positive candidate experience said their experience influenced their decision to accept the offer, according to CareerPlug respondents. Basically, what goes around comes around for your hiring process.

Here’s what you can do:

Your brand reputation could be one of the most costly consequences of a slow hiring process. If news of a poor candidate experience spreads, fewer candidates want to enter your pipeline. Add to that a bad employee experience, and even customers may start to avoid your brand.

Keeping your brand reputation positive means putting people first in your hiring and talent management strategies. At the end of the day, it all boils down to how well you show people you value their time and contributions while in the hiring process.

Relying on smart scheduling and collaboration tools to streamline decision-making, in addition to ensuring the interview process is fair, accurate, and convenient produces the best-quality hires in the shortest time. It may be hard to believe you can deliver on this many expectations with video interviewing software, but that’s why it’s considered an all-in-one solution for your speed to hire challenges.

Investing in a faster hiring process means investing in your company’s growth and supporting the employees and decision-makers who contribute to company success every day. 


How to Make the Most of Your Hiring Budget

Josh Tolan

Josh Tolan is the Founder and CEO of Spark Hire, a video interviewing platform used by 6,000+ customers in over 100 countries.