New research by Monster shows that employers who are hiring jumped from 82% in 2021 to 93% in 2022. At the same time, though, 80% of organisations say they’re having difficulty filling openings due to an ongoing shortage of skills. 

Though more organisations are ramping up their recruitment programmes, employers are still having a fair amount of trouble finding talent to fill their open roles. 

Combine the talent shortage with budget constraints and competition with other companies, and that recruitment process gets even slower!

The average timeline for the job interview process is 27.5 days in the UK. But for many companies, that timeline stretches on far too long - causing hiring headaches, recruiting poor fits out of desperation, and teams pushed to the edge. 

Worry not. Because in this recruitment guide, we’re giving you our top strategies for significantly speeding up the hiring process so you can streamline your recruitment activities, find the right person faster, and save a lot of stress.

What you can improve to hire faster

The average cost-per-hire in the UK is £3,000, though this figure can vary dramatically depending on the kind of talent you’re looking for and the longer it takes to find and recruit the right person, the more that cost goes up. 

So to lower your recruitment costs and get the job done faster, see where you can make improvements using our top strategies below:

Assess your hiring process

One of the best ways to speed up your hiring process is to see what areas might take longer than needed to identify bottlenecks. Are you not receiving enough applications in the first place? 

Does the CV review process take forever? Is the interview stage too long or complex? Knowing where you spend most of your time will give you an idea of what to focus on first. 

Give your job posts that extra shine

How you write and format your job posts can have a huge impact on the number of quality CVs coming through. Though many employers know this, we still come across job post descriptions that don’t give the applicant enough or the correct type of information. 

So, how can you write more compelling job posts for your open positions? Make sure it includes the following elements: 

• A summary of your company

• Company culture, mission, and values 

• A list of essential requirements 

• Whether the job is remote/ on site

• The role and responsibilities

• The soft and hard skills you’re looking for

• How you will measure performance

• Compensation and benefits/perks

Reinforce your employer brand

89% of candidates evaluate your business before applying to a role with your organisation, and 75% of hiring decision makers say it’s easier to attract top talent when they know of or about your organisation.

So if you don’t communicate what you’re like as an employer and what your company is all about clearly, it can take longer to attract the best talent. 

Using your website, social media, and advertising channels, let candidates know what makes your company a great place to work. 

You can do this by giving information about:

• Company milestones

• Employee testimonials

• An average work day

• Team events/ socialisation

• Employee training activities

• Who your employees are

• Company culture 

Take advantage of technology

68% of recruiters said that investing in new recruitment tech is the best way to improve hiring performance, according to Thrive. So, what recruitment software and tools can you use to speed up the hiring process? Here are some of the essentials. 

Video conferencing technology

Virtual interviews have become much more commonplace since the pandemic. In fact, 89% of organisations are now recruiting virtually, according to Monster. If you haven’t already adopted video software to schedule and streamline interviews, now is the time!

Applicant tracking software

Instead of flooding your inbox with countless emails back and forth with HR and candidates, you can centralise all information in one place with applicant tracking software.

Using applicant tracking software, you can:

• Keep all your applications in one place

• Use filters to narrow down your search

• Integrate with job websites to manage posts

• Figure out your cost to hire

• See where applicants are in the process

Email automations

Sending candidates emails to inform them about an upcoming interview, update them on their application, or give feedback after an interview is an essential part of the hiring process. But it can eat up a lot of time. 

Email automation is another fantastic way to accelerate your recruitment process. Instead of typing out an email every time, you can set “triggers” using email marketing software that fires off emails for specific actions like applying for a job or booking an interview. 

Make the application process easy

60% of candidates have quit a job application process midway because of its length and complexity, according to Hirevue. 

Combine that with the fact that 45% of job seekers use their mobile phones at least once per day to look at new roles, and you’ll realise how vital user-friendliness is for job applications.

Make sure you don’t make applying for your open role too complicated by:

• Ensuring your job post looks good on mobile

• Making your job post text easy to read

• Using bullet point lists where possible 

• Offering a “quick apply” option 

• Not asking candidates to do too much to apply

Do some interview prep

Sometimes the holdup in your recruitment process has less to do with CV screening and more with the interview stages. 

You’d think this is where you can sail through to the end, but unfortunately, many employers don’t prepare enough before the interview stage, so it takes far longer than expected.

To combat this, make sure you have a clear plan of action for:

• Interview questions you’ll ask

• Soft and hard skills you want

• What you’re willing to compromise on

• What your deal breakers are

• Your ideal personality for a culture fit

• Your limit for compensation/ benefits

• A points system for assessing candidates 

Share this information with anyone interviewing candidates to eliminate bias and ensure you’re all on the same page.

Be selective about who you invite to interview

After you’ve received enough CVs to arrange interviews, ensure you’re only inviting candidates that “jump out” and match your job description well. 

Don’t waste time interviewing candidates you hope will wow you in person. It’s much better to interview a small number of excellent candidates than a large number of average ones. 

By narrowing down your shortlist, you can eliminate hours upon hours of back-and-forth communication and pointless interviews and massively cut down your recruitment timelines. 

Communicate quickly at all stages

From inviting candidates to interviews and providing interview feedback for rejected candidates to the final offer stage, time really is of the essence when it comes to recruitment. So don’t dilly dally. 

Making candidates wait too long for a response will leave a bad taste in their mouths and leave them open to other offers. If you’ve found the right person for the job, get your offer in as soon as possible. 

It’s still a worker’s market with more jobs than unemployed people, so you can bet your desirable candidates are talking to plenty of other companies simultaneously. To make the hiring process go faster, you must be fast yourself!

Hire a recruitment agency to do the hard work for you

To speed up your recruitment process, it might be best to leave your hiring strategy in the hands of experienced recruitment consultants. 

Recruiters, like us, have the tools, knowledge, experience, and talent pool to find exactly who you’re looking for and get them on board much faster.

So if you need to quickly fill skill gaps in your business without compromising on the right cultural fit, why not talk to our recruitment consultants here at Buchanan Search?

Using The Buchanan Blueprint, our proven 6-step process for finding, hiring, and retaining top graduate talent, we help UK employers save on recruitment costs while securing eager, ambitious, and skilled professionals for their team. 

Want to learn more and see how we can help? Book your fluff-free strategy call. 

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