Slow and Long Recruitment Process is Bad for Your Business

A few years ago, a well-known international organization selected PT Headhunter Indonesia to become a recruitment partner on an executive search assignment for a critical position.

After I completed several meetings and phone calls with the top executives, hiring manager, and HR people, we mutually agreed on the proper qualifications of the ideal candidate to fill the role, a very particular function not commonly available in the market.

In just a couple of weeks of searching, my team and I were able to find five highly qualified passive candidates (currently employed, not looking for a job, but would be open to exploring a new opportunity which aligned with their career plan) who were interested in the job opening.

The following seven months after I submitted all candidate profiles to the client taught me how a slow and long hiring process could jeopardize your recruitment plan, employer brand, and overall business.

That is right; my client spent more than seven months on the hiring process for those five candidates. The final candidate (who fortunately accepted the job offer) has gone through seven face-to-face interviews with various members of my client’s organization during those seven months, plus a final meeting with the HR Manager to negotiate the remuneration package.

The total time spent from I signed the agreement as their recruitment partner until the selected candidate started her first day of work was about seven months and 23 days.

More than a decade in the recruitment industry has shown me all kinds of recruitment practices in many companies in many different industries. Large multinational businesses operated for more than 100 years, or a startup company whose deed of establishment was just signed the week before.

However, one thing in common about all those businesses, they need to hire the right people from time to time, and to hire the right people, they need to avoid a slow and endless hiring process at all costs.

Here are the reasons why a slow and long hiring process is dangerous for your business:

• It shows that your company is full of bureaucracy and inflexible.
• It indicates that you do not care about the candidates’ current commitments.
• It would surely waste everyone’s time and energy.
• Your competitors have the opportunity to leapfrog your slow recruitment process every time and snatch your shortlisted candidates before you could even move to the second round of interviews.
• It will be many lost opportunities on your company’s side.

Some business executives or owners argue that a slow and long hiring process is necessary to ensure they would get the best possible candidates.

I somewhat agree with the latter part. The intention to recruit the best candidate available in the market is ideal. Still, sometimes companies spend too much time trying to find the best candidate, and they eventually forget that recruitment is all about hiring the right candidate, not necessarily the best one.

It is probably the right time for you to review the whole recruitment process of your company. Create a new SOP for hiring, streamline the process, put a specific timeframe for hiring, manage the hiring manager’s expectation of the ideal candidate, and most importantly, get a commitment from all parties involved in the recruitment process to adhere to this new SOP.

When you successfully shorten the timeframe and streamline the whole hiring process, it will be a win/win solution for your company and all shortlisted candidates, of course.