Ask a hiring manager what’s their biggest frustration and it is usually this is job is taking too long to fill. Yet, often we find the company, in turn, is taking too long to hire. There is a misconception that you need to interview a handful of candidates, even after you found the best choice within the first few days of opening the req. We’ve seen it first hand; companies lose their best candidates if they aren’t providing them status updates a week post interview. Additionally, hiring is very competitive in today’s job market, and your competitors are winning by interviewing and putting together offers quickly.

Put yourself in the shoes of the candidate, you made it past the initial screen, then had a face-to-face interview, you think it went well and then nothing. Whether it’s your lengthy interview process or that you are continuing to screen other candidates, the top candidates you have interviewed are likely going to lose interest and pursue other opportunities.

Candidates use the interview process to gauge your company’s culture, and your post-interview communication and organization may impact the candidate’s assessment of what it will be like to work with you. If you do provide updates, yet drag it out for two weeks or more, you risk losing your front-runners who are now questioning your processes.

Today’s IT job market is highly competitive, especially in Pittsburgh and your hiring process needs a tight timeline from the first interview to hire, while not missing any of the milestones in between.

Here are a few of the impacts when you’re slow to hire:

1. Lower quality hires
From our earlier video, Why Being Slow to Hire Damages Your Business Recruiting Results, the top 10% of talent is gone within ten days. If your process is taking longer than this, those high performers aren’t going to be available, and you’ll be stuck with the remaining weaker candidates.

2. Losing the competitive advantage
That top talent you missed out on because your process was too lengthy is now likely working for your competitors. As your competitors start to build and round out their teams with the region’s top talent, you’re going to struggle to fill your vacant positions. Each day a position remains unfilled, you are negatively impacting your bottom-line, and team morale will soon be an issue as stressed out co-workers are bearing the increased workload.

3. Damage to your reputation
Most companies want to be in a position where they are the employer of choice. Your hiring process will be the topic of conversation, and you can be guaranteed candidates discuss with their peers their experiences with different companies. If your hiring process is weakening the candidate experience, you may lose current and future candidates you are interested in talking with due to the stories they’ve heard about interviewing with your company or worse; you may lose these people as customers if you offer a product or service they use.

Bottom line: You can’t afford to be slow to hire as it will result in decreased productivity, loss of revenue and damage to your reputation. If you have questions on how to get started streamlining your hiring process, we can help point you in the right direction.