How Shortening Your Hiring Process Can Get You Better Talent
Matt Brewster
Every time you open a job, the clock starts ticking. Most recruiting teams are familiar with the time-to-hire metric. The longer the job stays open, the more pressure on these teams to find someone—anyone—to fill the role.
Pre-pandemic, the average time to fill the top ten sought after physician specialties for most organizations was approximately 145.2 days, with Psychiatry leading the charge at 186 days. There probably isn’t a single person on your healthcare hiring team that thinks this average is a great number. With the Great Resignation, the time-to-hire metric got much worse. Many organizations are now seeing their time-to-hire metric anywhere from a few months to over a year. While you may be working hard to bring those numbers down, it may be the process itself that isn’t doing you any favors. The data tells us that 62% of professionals report losing interest in a job if they don’t hear back from the employer within two weeks of the first interview; three weeks and that number jumps to 77%.
Could there be a correlation between the length of your hiring process and the inability to find qualified candidates quickly? If your hiring process is out of date or too lengthy, it certainly isn’t helping. Here’s how to shorten your hiring process and get better talent—faster.
What Are the Benefits of a Faster Hire?
Having a job opening puts pressure on the rest of the healthcare team. The first benefit of speeding up your hiring workflows is that you’ll find candidates faster and keep your existing staff from doing double duty—and possibly burning out.
We’re not trying to suggest you rush through the hiring process either. Getting the hire wrong can wreck that team you’re trying so hard to protect. Instead, you must try to correct outdated application processes that slow down your effort to hire. How can this benefit your organization?
- You’ll save money.
- You’ll improve the candidate experience.
- You’ll improve time-to-hire.
- You’ll become more competitive and attract top quality candidates away from other healthcare organizations.
- You’ll do a better job supporting your existing employees.
While these are a few of the benefits of shortening your time to hire, the question remains about how to do it. Here are some suggestions for speeding up the recruiting process.
Step One – Audit Your Technology Processes.
When was the last time you applied for a job on your website? What you’ll likely find is an unwieldy process that isn’t user-friendly and maybe not even smartphone optimized. Your goal is to start at the beginning of the recruitment process to see where things bog down. Where are the bottlenecks? Is it the technology?
Step Two – Audit Your People Process.
Do you have too many interviews spread out over a long period of time where candidates could potentially lose interest? Is each interviewer prepared to be a brand ambassador, literally “selling” your organization over all of the other ones in the market? Did you plan a great phone interview and/or site visit- time for your organization to showcase its strengths and time for you to get to know the candidate? Can the person in charge of contract negotiations get it done in a readied fashion?
Assessing your hiring process is the first step toward repairing it. But if you really want to speed it up and put more highly qualified candidates through your job funnel faster, consider partnering with a professional recruiting firm like MedSource Consultants. We work closely with our healthcare partners to get you top-quality candidates and help you streamline your interview process. Imagine coming into work tomorrow with a pool of great talent and a partner ready to assist you in reducing your time-to-hire numbers. That’s the power of our process. Contact MedSource Consultants today to cut your time in half.