Reasons Not to Delay Hiring in a Candidate Driven Marketplace

One of the things we help our clients do is figure out how to do a better job of capturing the attention of high-qualified job candidates. After all, if your ideal future employee doesn’t know you exist, how will you ever get to interview and hire them?

The next step, then, is to figure out how to actually recruit that talent into the company. What hiring managers are growing accustomed to is the frustration of engaging with exciting new talent and then never getting to hire them because they move on to another employer so quickly.

This problem is a result of the candidate-driven market that we are currently experiencing. There are stories of hiring managers who deal with job candidates not showing up to interviews with more regularity in the past— and these are the good candidates, not the bottom-of-the-barrel last-chance candidates.

Have you experienced a competitor snatching up a candidate before you can make an offer? What about people you’ve hired not even arriving for their first day of work because they have started a job elsewhere?

It’s foolish to dismiss this as a “kids these days” issue. That’s short-sighted. These behaviors simply aren’t limited to half-hearted job applicants or people who you wouldn’t want to hire anyway.

Hiring managers can revise their recruitment practices to put a stop to this trend. While it seems like this is the result of candidates being flighty or uncommitted, the more accurate explanation is that this is all what happens during a candidate-driven market.

Understanding a candidate-driven market

The unemployment rate in the United States has been steadily declining for nearly ten years, which means there are fewer people looking for work. A lot of highly qualified individuals are already working in jobs where they are experiencing job satisfaction. Although this means great things for workers, it definitely presents some challenges to recruiters like us and hiring managers like the ones we work with.

It is also why some of your candidates behave strangely or outside of what you would expect. Yes, they’re still getting great advice about how to be confident and impressive in the interview process, but when they will reliably encounter multiple job offers during their application process, the overall behavior of job applicants does change.

How can you avoid these pitfalls?

After seeing this happen time and time again, what do experienced hiring managers do? What do we advise our clients to do? We have one really big, really important piece of advice. Good news--it’s a really simple idea.

Be fast!

In previous years, hiring managers could drag their feet in the recruitment and hiring process. There were plenty of qualified candidates out there, and not a lot of positions to fill. If one person didn’t work out, someone else would. Working with speed simply wasn’t a priority.

Back then, you could think seriously about every aspect of a potential new hire and their compatibility with the company. You could conduct a few days’ worth of interviews, evaluating the candidate’s qualifications, personality, and fit within the company culture. It wasn’t a big deal to wait to hear back from someone’s references. If your colleague was on vacation, you could wait for him or her to get back so you could get their input.

The hiring process took a long time, and those of us in the industry developed some habits that simply aren’t compatible with candidate-driven marketplaces.

Update your hiring practices for 2019

The habits we're developing in our industry still exist at companies that haven’t adjusted to being in this kind of economy. In short, it’s hurting those companies’ chances of hiring the right talent. What hiring managers must understand is that today’s candidates have countless opportunities for employment, and they are looking for the ideal fit. In order to prove to these great leads that you are that perfect fit, you’ll have to work quickly.

Here are some ways you can streamline your hiring process to impress candidates and get them onboarded before they end up finding a different place to work:

• Respond in a timely manner to their questions and inquiries. If you don’t know the answer, don’t just wait to reply. Reply and let them know you’ll be getting right back to them.

• Consider implementing automated systems to take candidates through the first stages of hiring, including application submission, scheduling interviews, etc.

• If you need to send the applicant any materials to review or fill out, be sure to do that quickly, too.

• Contact the candidate soon after the interview to make an offer, if you are going to make an offer.

• Anticipate realistic counter-offers and respond quickly. If you can respond in the conversation, that is even best.

• Don’t delay the start date or any onboarding.

Are you still operating like it’s 2009? If so, you are likely missing out on excellent candidates who you would love to have at your company. You may be in need of some professional guidance for how to implement a more streamlined recruiting and hiring process. At Select One, we would love to share with you our expertise in bringing talent and employers together in a fast and effective way.

Want to know more about recruiting trends that can influence your company this next year? Check out our free offer, Recruiting in 2019. And if you have questions, contact us today.