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4 Reliable Ways to Boost Speed to Hire

4 Reliable Ways to Boost Speed to Hire

Speed to hire can vary from role to role and across industries. Unfortunately, there’s no magic number you can aim for and achieve. However, time to hire (or more importantly, your speed to offer) is a major contributor to your success as an HR or recruiting professional. 

Candidates expect timely responses to applications and interviews. If your process isn’t fast enough to beat the competition to an offer, your company will miss out on top talent time and again.

Hiring and recruiting trends evolve with numerous influences from the market, but a few approaches to streamlining the hiring process stand the test of time. Here are four easy ways you and your team can double your speed to hire: 

Communicate clearly and consistently

Communication is key. Whether between hiring stakeholders, candidates, or clients, if you aren’t constantly communicating clear feedback and expectations, your interview process is likely to halt at various stages. Furthermore, candidates are not willing to wait weeks to hear back from your team.

Share a timeline with candidates about when they can expect to hear from you. Then, set reminders to check in for evaluation feedback from peers, and follow up with candidates even if you don’t yet have details about who to advance. 

Not only will these check-ins help you keep everyone on the same page and improve the candidate experience, but also it will ensure you’re not wasting valuable time collaborating over candidates who have accepted other offers.

You can use video messaging to personalize communication with candidates, give them a glimpse into your company culture, and share video profiles of team members and leaders. Making meaningful connections with candidates while they wait for a formal update leaves a lasting, positive impression.

Avoid scheduling conflicts

Recruiters report the #1 challenge to scheduling interviews is getting everyone’s schedules to align. If you’re inviting candidates to submit asynchronous video responses through a dedicated video interview platform, you bypass scheduling conflicts in first-round interviews.

Candidates can record video responses on their own time and when you receive their submitted interview, you can review it at your convenience. Better yet, you can share early candidate interviews with hiring decision-makers and get timely feedback about who to advance to live and in-person interviews.

The faster you move candidates on to higher-level interviews, the quicker you make your speed to hire. You free up time for stakeholders in the decision-making process to focus on other priorities by enabling them to fit candidate evaluations into their schedules seamlessly. Not to mention, you eliminate the time you typically spend chasing down feedback.

Structure the interview process

Another key contributor to clunky, slow hiring is lacking structure in your interview evaluation process. When decision-makers have to weigh responses to different questions for the same role, bias and unfairness can creep into the process. Similarly, when there isn’t a streamlined system to relay feedback between collaborators, critical information can be lost.

Asking candidates to respond to the same set of questions for a single open role levels the playing field. It also ensures interviewers have a predetermined set of criteria to measure candidates’ answers. Structuring the interview process virtually eliminates bias and speeds up the evaluation process, while helping identify the best-fit candidates more accurately. 

Update interview technology

One of the best ways to turbo-boost your speed to hire in this modern age is to use the most innovative technology. Smart scheduling tools, SMS text messaging, and one-way and live video interviews are reliable ways to speed up each stage of the hiring process.

When you are flexible with a candidate’s availability to communicate, you will get quicker responses and confirmed interest from candidates. We live in a fast-paced world with more awareness than ever before about optimizing accessibility and convenience in the hiring process. Using the hiring technology that simplifies interviewing for candidates sets your company apart from the competition.

Also, implementing video interviewing software into your recruiting and hiring process broadens your talent pool. Empowering candidates and decision-makers to connect virtually reduces travel costs and time in the early screening stages. This makes it simpler and faster to assess for fit, get in-person interviews scheduled, and move the process forward.


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