ERE’s daily article hits a chord with me today – Understanding Why Fast Hiring Is Critical to Recruiting Success.  We have been beaten down of late due to some slow-moving hiring processes.  The author, Dr. John Sullivan, provides many suggestions for putting metrics to your hiring process.  However, I found these stats to be the compelling reasons why you should worry about the speed of your hiring process:

One large accounting firm recently found that if they didn’t act within 22 days, their chances of landing “high-demand” candidates decreased by nearly 90%. A large electronics firm researched the issue and found that the very best in their field (the top 10% of candidates) were often gone within 10 days.

The logic of speed hiring is simple: if Tiger Woods decided to leave his golf team, he would be in such demand that he might be in and then out of the job market in as little as a few hours.

A second reason for speed hiring is the economic loss to the corporation of having position vacancies. Obviously, if an airline has insufficient pilots for each of its planes, it would lose revenue from each of those canceled flights.

We deal in sales positions only so we have a skewed perspective, perhaps.  But I am always caught by a company’s indifference towards an open sales territory/position.  These are real costs to a company, but we have seen some take an inordinate amount of time to schedule interviews, follow up with candidates or come to yes/no decisions.

The present economy probably gives some companies a false sense of security.  The economy is slow so there must be plenty of candidates and few opportunities.  This relaxed approach will have to change quickly as the Boomers retire and more positions flood a market with fewer candidates.

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