In a tough job market, employers are looking for time to hire

Fast-track hiring is all the rage, according to the headlines. UPS hired many of its seasonal workers within 30 minutes of their application. Southwest Airlines completed a team of on-ramp workers with on-site interviews and job offers.

But other employers have been quietly battling the market, attracting candidates faster than their competitors through process excellence. In the recruiting world, there’s a name for this process: It’s time to hire. Also known as time to fill, this metric reflects how long it takes an employer to hire a new person for a job opening.

Hiring at top speed doesn’t mean bragging rights. Sources told HR Dive that an organization’s time to hire percentages affect business results as much as they affect the candidate experience. The good news for slow hires? There are several steps employers can take to increase hiring speed.

60 days: “This is the standard”

On average, it takes organizations about 60 days to fill a non-management professional role. “That’s the general understanding among recruiters,” Fortune Brands senior talent acquisition specialist Erin Stevens told HR Dive in an interview. “That’s the standard. You want it as soon as possible, of course, but that’s just how long it takes.’

Senior Vice President of People and Talent at Employ Inc. Corey Burky consistent with Stevens’ 60-day standard. At Employ, it usually takes 60 days for an offer to be accepted from the time the company opens a job.

Stephens noted that the time to fill will shrink or increase depending on the level of the role. Entry-level roles require two or three weeks to fill. At her company, recruiters aim to close non-management positions in 45 days or less. Directors and Vice Presidents? That could take up to 120 days, Stevens said.

Still, Stevens, who said she finds the metric fascinating, is trying to beat the clock. “For me personally, I always try to do as soon as possible,” she said. “40 days or less.”

When it comes to hiring, Berkey focuses on another metric: days in process. “I look at ‘unfinished days’ a lot,” he said. “I measure it from the day the right candidate throws their hat in the ring to the day we make an offer.” At Employ, a candidate’s days on the job are typically 16 or less.

Regardless of an organization’s average time to hire, most try to move at top speed, Stevens said. She compared the job market to the real estate market, noting the similarities. “We have a lot of work but limited inventory,” she said. “It’s really on the job seeker’s side — they can go out and search through all these options.”

Stevens has seen candidates say yes to offers from her company, only to accept a counteroffer from their current employer days before their start date. Candidates will also drop out late in the game after accepting an offer from a competitor.

All about accountability

As employers scramble for workers, hiring speed is a top priority. “This is a really critical indicator. It’s very important in the current market,” Burkey said. “This ensures that we quickly select the best talent.”

Berkey said businesses suffer a “trident of pain” if they don’t pay attention to the time to hire. First, they will miss out on talent. Then they’ll run into the business consequences of empty roles: burnout of current team members, stagnant business goals, and lagging results.

Stevens expressed the importance of tracking time-to-hire, but gave different reasons. “It’s a question of accountability,” she said. Time-to-hire tracking shows where the process is lagging. Individual recruiters can pay attention to their own numbers. But depending on the system a company uses, the metric can be broken down by department and by hiring manager. “Data is great for starting those conversations and really seeing where those bottlenecks are or where things are taking longer,” Stevens said. “It all comes back to responsibility. Who does what, who moves whom.”

Part of the challenge in recruiting is bringing multiple teams together around a single goal. If a hiring manager wants to post a position but is hesitant to schedule any interviews, it takes time to hire. “It looks bad to me, but really it’s the manager,” Stevens said. “If you’re not ready, we have to hold him.”

Accountability time for hiring lenders is valuable as it allows them to speed up the process. And quick experience makes for happy candidates, both Stevens and Burkey noted. When candidates don’t have to wait to hear from recruiters—that they’re scheduled for an interview, that hiring managers need a few days to decide they got the job, that they should keep looking—that tells job seekers that they are wanted and taken seriously.

Improve time to hire

By tracking time to hire, employers and recruiters can pinpoint people and processes, extending the timeline. It can revert to a hiring flow with too many steps or too many participants. Or the problem may be with a particular person; Both Stevens and Burkey mentioned hiring managers as potential culprits.

“If a recruiter is the first line of defense and flags a person who’s a good fit, but that person isn’t scheduled for the next round of discussions for a week and a half, you’ve got a problem,” Berkey explained. “We say recruiting is a full-contact sport. This means we’ll delete things from your calendar to make room for those conversations. Otherwise, you will lose this candidate.”

Ironically, recruiters can also have trouble finding time to recruit, Stephens pointed out. “A lot of people are in HR and recruiting, so you have to spend time on recruiting,” she said. While Stevens’ position is solely in recruiting, she still dedicates certain parts of her days to the task. She actively recruits every day from 8am to 9am and from noon to 1pm and blocks every Friday afternoon.

Outside of people, several pipeline processes can drag out time to hire, Berkey said. Grades are common speed bumps that Berkey encouraged fellow recruiters to review: “What if you change it? What happens if you eliminate it?”

Recruiters should also consider how long it takes to communicate decisions throughout the process. If a team interviews an amazing candidate, but the candidate doesn’t hear about an offer until four days after the interview, recruiters should question the gap, Berkey said.

Berkey and Stevens noted another avenue for hiring a problem area: Schedule. Both praised planning tools to ease the burden.

As recruiters look for delays in their hiring processes, they need to remember why speed matters. “It all depends on the applicant’s experience,” Stevens said. “It’s go, go, go. Constant back and forth. You have to reach out to people and get them answers.”