There is nothing more frustrating for a Hiring Manager than the time it takes to onboard a suitable candidate. When I speak to managers, HR professionals and business owners about the recruitment process, reducing the time to hire is repeatedly top of their wish list. Time to hire delays are an irritation in any situation, but when you are hiring for a highly skilled or specialist role, it can be particularly frustrating. With a current skills shortage, any delay in the hiring process could mean competing offers from other organisations and additional time for counteroffers from current employers. Fortunately, the use of video technology can really help cut these delays, and we are seeing it used more and more to give employers the competitive edge when it comes to employing the right person.
Video in recruitment in action – a case study
The first thing to do if you are looking to reduce your time to hire is consider your current recruitment process and where and when the video could help. Let’s look at how we implemented it for a client and got a great result.
We work as the recruitment partner with an owner-managed IT services business who were looking to hire a Senior Engineer. This is an ‘in demand’ role, and they were getting frustrated at losing good candidates after the second interview stage of their four-part hiring process. There were three stakeholders, and quite understandably, all of them wanted to meet any prospective employee before making an offer. All of which is perfectly reasonable, but it did create a significant time lag between initial contact and the offer. It was in this time lag those candidates were being tempted away by other offers. While this seems a rock and hard place situation because of the unavoidable four-stage process, if you bring video into the equation, it makes a huge difference. In fact, we were able to reduce this to a two-stage process and save a significant amount of time.
Firstly, we screened and shortlisted the potential employees, and then we arranged and recorded the interviews with the remaining candidates. To ensure an equitable result, we used the same competency-based questions throughout so that the videos could be reviewed in a single, consistently applied context. These recordings were then made available to the stakeholders via a login facility. Because the videos were available as needed, the management team could see candidates and share their thoughts without the time constraints of arranging space in several different schedules. From here, a three-candidate shortlist was created, and they were invited to an interview. By using video technology, we had reduced the interview process from four tiers down to just two and saved significant time for everyone concerned. Most importantly, we were able to invite and then respond to the candidates within a very short period. This was so successful that it caused a rather nice dilemma for the Hiring Manager. Instead of losing appropriate candidates to other employers, they found themselves unable to decide between two superb potential team members. In the end, mostly for budgetary reasons, only one candidate was chosen. The hire was completed, and our clients were delighted with the results.
Winning half the battle in advance with video
In the current recruitment landscape, it is more important than ever to reduce the timeframe between introduction and offer. Adding video to the process can reduce your expected time to hire by as much as 50%. Half the time cost means that you are significantly more likely to secure the best talent and put you ahead of the game when it comes to creating the right team.
Here is what one client had to say:
We have used Next Move in the past to successfully identify a senior engineer and most recently retained Next Move Executive Search to assist us in hiring another engineer. Nigel’s approach to this assignment was very thorough as he researched the whole market, including our competitors! We felt that this process was a real partnership as Nigel guided and updated us on a regular basis sharing all his research data with us. We particularly liked the video recording of the first interviews, which Nigel carried out for us saving us a lot of time and was valuable in deciding on the shortlist. As a result of Nigel’s effort, we are delighted and very excited with our new hire! I have no hesitation in recommending Next Move Executive Search.
Contact us If you would like to find out how our video technology can help you reduce your time to hire.