Your recruitment agency's time to hire has a critical impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the recruitment process.
This key recruiting metric reveals if your hiring process is working well — or if it is failing.
Driving your time to hire down is vital to remain competitive and responsive in a dynamic job market.
But with the recruitment landscape only becoming more competitive, maintaining a low time to hire is more challenging than ever.
In this guide, we'll cover 19 key strategies for proactively reducing your time to hire, boosting performance, and getting ahead of your competitors.
What is Time to Hire?
Time to hire is the period from when a job requisition is opened until an offer is accepted.
This is a crucial recruitment metric that provides essential information, including:
- Recruitment efficiency
- Candidate experience
Your recruitment efficiency and candidate experience are both vital areas to focus on to enhance agency performance and ultimately generate more revenue.
After all, a low time to hire typically means happier clients, happier candidates, and a strong agency reputation.
What is the Ideal Time to Hire?
If you're wondering how to reduce time to hire, it's worth familiarising yourself with key industry benchmarks.
The average time to hire was 4.8 weeks in January 2024, according to TotalJobs Hiring Trends Index for Q1 2024.
However, this figure varies significantly depending on the sector, organisation size, and role.
For instance, the research revealed that the average time to hire for larger businesses in January 2024 was 5.1 weeks.
Fifty-nine per cent of organisations surveyed also reported that skills and labour shortages were increasing the time it took to place candidates.
In this competitive market, the ideal time to hire is the shortest time to hire.
For more key industry benchmarks, check out our State of Recruitment 2024 report here.
19 Ways and Strategies to Reduce Time to Hire In 2024
Ready to speed up the hiring process?
Read on for 19 critical strategies on how to reduce average time to hire.
#1 Streamline the Hiring Process
As any recruiter knows, the hiring process is not always smooth.
Sometimes, this feels completely out of the recruiter's control, from candidates dropping out of the process just hours before the interview to clients changing their minds on job ad criteria after sourcing has taken place.
This can all add days — or even weeks — onto your time to hire metric, slowing momentum.
But by streamlining the hiring process, you can ensure that all the parts of recruiting that are within your control are managed effectively.
This also means that you're less likely to encounter hurdles from the client or candidate side.
For example, if your candidate nurture campaign is optimised to make applicants feel valued and excited about the potential role, they're less likely to drop out of the process.
And if you thoroughly explore the brief with the client before kicking off sourcing, they're less likely to be unhappy with the candidates you present for interview.
To achieve a streamlined hiring process, implement a structured and standardised approach that is designed to minimise delays and bolstered by industry-leading tech tools.
Ensure your hiring team has access to all the assets they need to move the recruitment process from one stage to the next, from email and contract templates to candidate information.
For a smooth hiring process, it's also essential to employ data analytics in recruitment that give you an overview of your entire funnel.
This allows you to track and improve the hiring process in real time by quickly spotting bottlenecks and tweaking workflows to prevent these issues from arising again.
Meanwhile, performance-based recruiting software like OneUp tracks recruiters' targets and goals and motivates them to perform at a high standard and, yes, allow you to precisely track your time to hire.
#2 Leverage Advanced ATS Solutions
Harness the power of sophisticated Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to slash time to hire.
At its core, an ATS is software that tracks candidates throughout the hiring process.
Typically, it will source, collate, and help screen CVs and display information about where each candidate is within the recruitment funnel.
When a new job is added to the ATS, the platform generates an ideal candidate profile, which it uses to sort through and rank candidates—from both your database and the open web—based on how closely they match its criteria.
This empowers hiring managers to very quickly identify the top talent for the job opening.
But as the development of recruitment technology snowballs, many of the ATS platforms today boast advanced functionality to help you further smooth the hiring process.
Top ATS encompass features including:
- Google Chrome extensions for sourcing candidates directly from the open web
- In-built video interview modules
- CRM facilities
- Blind screening capabilities to eliminate hiring bias
- Automated interview scheduling
- Automated offer letter distribution
- A data analytics suite
- An automated onboarding module
- A wide variety of integrations or open API
Furthermore, many recruitment management systems (RMS) now combine ATS and CRM into one end-to-end platform.
With so many options on the market, recruitment leaders must thoroughly examine the needs of their agency before choosing which modern ATS to invest in.
#3 Optimise Job Listings
Nothing slows the recruitment process down like attracting a large number of candidates who are simply not a good fit for the role.
It's vital to ensure that job descriptions are clear, concise, and tailored to attract the right candidates quickly.
But developing compelling job descriptions doesn't need to be a drawn-out process.
Indeed, if your goal is to reduce time to hire, then it pays to develop a highly effective process for writing job ads and then standardise it across your agency.
Develop templates that recruiters can use to quickly put together a job ad that will attract ideal candidates time and time again.
It's worth creating different templates for different sectors, roles, and seniority levels.
Include a list of questions to ask clients that thoroughly investigate their brief and ensure the role they're asking you to fill is actually the role they need you to fill.
For example, if the client wants to hire a junior digital marketer but is asking for upwards of five years in the industry — perhaps they actually need a senior digital marketer.
If you write a job description for a junior digital marketer, you're unlikely to find candidates with the level of skills and experience they actually need — forcing you to revise the job ad down the line.
This will significantly increase your time to hire.
But send in your recruiters armed with a list of questions that will iron out such inconsistencies, and they should nail the job listing the first time.
Cutting-edge recruitment tech can also help you to optimise job listings by:
- Developing your ideal customer profile
- Helping to write job listings based on your ideal customer profile
- Automatically sharing job listings to a wide variety of channels
#4 Enhance the Candidate Experience
In 2024, the battle to bag top talent is intense — and recruitment agencies can no longer afford to deliver a sub-par candidate experience.
An enhanced candidate experience leads to more engaged candidates, higher-quality hires for clients, and a better reputation for your agency.
But it can also markedly slash time to hire.
To truly enhance the candidate experience, you need to put yourself in applicants' shoes and deploy sophisticated software designed to smooth their journey.
Start by considering where applicants begin their journey with you.
This could be:
- On your website
- Your clients' career page
- A job ad on your social media channel or job board
- Content on your social media channels
Ensure these entry points are technologically sound (no delays loading or broken links) and that the information on them is disseminated clearly and concisely in line with your client's tone of voice.
Next, ensure the application process is smooth. This means a clean online application form with an engaging (and perhaps gamified) design and a clear point of contact if applicants get stuck or have any questions.
The quality of the application process can also be fortified by a chatbot that will answer applicants' frequently asked questions.
When it comes to skills and personality assessments, aim for gamified online tests that candidates can complete at their convenience.
To avoid hiccups during the interview process, use software that automates scheduling and sends timely reminders to candidates and interviewers.
After the interview, there's no time to waste.
Quickly meet with the client to determine the successful applicant, and then trigger an automated offer letter to secure the candidate — before someone else does!
An effective nurturing campaign should run throughout the hiring process to ensure every candidate feels valued, well-informed, and excited about the prospect of the role.
Alongside chatbots, automated email and messaging sequences can help to nurture candidates.
#5 Utilise AI and Automation Tools
As outlined above, AI and automation are extremely useful tools for almost every part of the hiring journey.
In fact, investing in this technology will likely be the biggest contributor to reducing your time to hire.
AI-powered outreach tools make sourcing quick and efficient. They use technology to scan CVs and profiles on the web, match potential candidates to job ads with high precision, and launch outreach sequences to these candidates through email and LinkedIn.
They can also greatly assist in screening candidates, developing skills and personality assessments, and scoring assessments against job criteria.
Meanwhile, AI-driven chatbots and email sequencing tools can perform nurture sequences and ensure consistent communication with candidates.
Interview scheduling tools and automated offer letters will also help to reduce your time to hire.
Finally, AI-powered recruitment analytics tools tell you how your recruitment journey is performing and identify any hold-ups in your processes — allowing you to make data-driven decisions to refine and improve the candidate experience.
#6 Focus on Effective Sourcing
Sourcing is often the most time-consuming part of a recruiter's role.
This means that making your sourcing process more effective and efficient can significantly cut your time to hire.
It's important to your recruiters to quality channels that your data has shown you bring in qualified candidates faster.
Why?
If recruiters are told to simply "get out there and find a candidate for X job," they could waste considerable time on sourcing channels with a low — or even non-existent — success rate.
After all, there are a huge number of sourcing channels out there—some are full of quality candidates for all sorts of roles, others work better for some industries than others, and some are notorious for displaying out-of-date or irrelevant information.
As a recruitment leader in your niche, you should have data showing where your best candidates have come from.
How you classify your 'best' candidates will depend on your agency's targets and goals.
For instance, some agencies consider the best sourcing channels to be the ones that deliver the most candidates who are successful in the interview.
Others may categorise their best candidates as those who stayed in the role for upwards of six months after securing the job.
Conversely, agencies that frequently take on high-volume hiring projects may prioritise channels that quickly deliver a large number of potential candidates.
And when you're cutting time to hire, you may specifically want to look at the sourcing channels you used on projects when time to hire was especially low.
Whatever your approach, arm your recruiters with data-driven step-by-step sourcing plans for the different sectors you hire into, and watch your sourcing efficiency rise.
Once you've implemented your standardised sourcing plans, continue to track their impact, and hone your strategies on an ongoing basis.
#7 Prioritise Responsive Communication
No recruiter likes to see a top candidate drop out of the application process.
Candidate drop-out is not always preventable, for example, due to personal circumstances or a dream job offer.
But candidates often drop out mid-journey due to a lack of communication — significantly increasing your time to hire.
If there's no communication after completing a job application, they may assume they've been unsuccessful and apply for other roles elsewhere, for instance.
Some strong candidates might drop out because they do not feel like they have enough information about a fast-approaching job interview, and their questions are not being answered.
Others may feel that your lack of communication suggests they are not valued — and therefore, you're not confident in their ability to secure the role, meaning continuing the application would be a waste of time.
This is why it's vital to prioritise responsive communication.
There are a few ways to achieve this, such as blocking out half an hour every morning and afternoon for recruiters to stay on top of their candidate communication.
Alternatively, set targets for their response to emails, messages, and phone calls within a specific time frame.
If responsive communication is an issue within your agency, consider using recruitment performance tracking software OneUp.
OneUp allows you to set up custom dashboards that track progress towards individual recruiters' and teams' goals.
Connect this software to your recruitment CRM to clearly display which recruiters are and are not hitting their candidate communication goals.
You can also launch competitions with attached incentives to motivate recruiters to be more responsive regarding communication.
It's worth putting the effort into driving better candidate communication.
Not only will this keep candidates engaged and improve your agency's reputation, but it will also help move the candidate journey along more quickly, directly reducing time to hire.
#8 Streamlined Interview Scheduling
Automated interview scheduling is a quick win when cutting hiring time.
These tools automatically contact the candidate and interviewer to find out when they are free for the interview and send invites.
Should one of the attendees need to cancel or postpone, the automated interview scheduler will handle shuffling the interviews around.
This is useful if there's only one interview during the hiring process, but it becomes even more beneficial when two or three are required.
#9 Build and Maintain a Talent Pipeline
Imagine if, when a new job is added, you could dive straight into a pool of qualified candidates perfect for the role in question.
This hugely reduces time spent sourcing and should ultimately result in a higher-quality hire.
Building and maintaining a healthy talent pipeline turns this dream scenario into a reality.
When recruiters are given the time and space to identify candidates for potential future roles, they can focus more on quality, with no big deadline looming.
To build and maintain a talent pipeline, you must:
- Consider the type of candidates your clients typically require and the types of roles your agency most commonly hires into
- Develop a framework that recruiters can use to find this type of candidate, encompassing everything from skills and experience to seniority and culture fit
- Give your recruiters the time to proactively source candidates that match this framework and add them to your database
- Nurture these candidates via email, text, and messages, employing AI-powered communication tools to bolster your efforts
- Contact relevant candidates within this pipeline when a suitable role arises
This way, you have a reserve of qualified candidates ready and waiting to fill future positions.
#10 Facilitate Collaboration with Hiring Managers
Hiring managers should be closely integrated into your recruitment process for quicker decision-making.
From greenlighting a job ad and deciding on candidates to interview to making a final hiring decision, nothing slows down the recruitment process like a time-poor hiring manager.
These delays are understandable: hiring managers are often extremely busy, and recruiters are keen to avoid annoying them.
But getting them on side early can help to reduce these delays.
At the beginning of the recruitment process, give them a road map, complete with milestones and deadlines, which tells them exactly when and how their input will be required.
Make it clear that if they are able to stick to the deadlines on their side of the process, you will be able to facilitate a hire by X date.
If they fail to keep their end of the bargain, however, it will be longer before they get the new hire they need.
It's also important to keep them updated on progress throughout the hiring process to ensure they remain engaged.
At your first meeting, ask about their preferred communication channels and what level of communication they would like to receive from you throughout the recruitment process.
This will help you to communicate with them effectively.
#11 Implement Targeted Recruitment Practices
In today's fiercely competitive recruitment climate, recruiters can no longer afford to take a scattergun approach to hiring.
Instead, they must focus on specific recruitment strategies tailored to the role and the industry's needs.
Not only will this yield a better end result, but it will save a considerable amount of time.
For example, if you're looking to hire a senior accountant, your recruitment process will look completely different to if you were recruiting a nurse.
Everything from the sourcing approach to the skills assessment and the nature of interviews would change.
But when recruiters are under pressure to quickly find strong candidates for a role, there's a temptation to try everything they can.
They might source from every possible channel, conduct outreach to every profile that loosely matches the job description, and bring in as many professionals as possible for an interview.
But when you're trying to reduce time to hire while driving up candidate quality, a more precise approach will better serve your purposes.
And as an expert in your sector or niche, you should be able to use data insights to refine your recruitment practises time and time again until you've got hiring down to a fine art.
#12 Utilise Digital Hiring Platforms
If your recruiters are still taking a manual approach to the vast majority of the hiring process, you're wasting valuable time.
There are comprehensive digital platforms on the market that cover the hiring process from start to finish.
This software has been built to make the hiring process more efficient and typically integrates with additional tools to further expedite it.
Of course, investing in any kind of digital platform is going to cost your agency.
But with the time savings they afford, your agency becomes significantly more scalable — empowering you to generate more revenue.
Consider investing in one or more of the following:
- Recruitment management systems (RMS)
- Candidate management systems (CMS)
- Applicant tracking systems (ATS)
- Recruiting analytics tools
- Performance-based recruiting platforms
- Gamified skills assessment software
- Recruiter collaboration software
- Employee referral platforms
Remember that some software incorporates several of the above tools onto one platform.
#13 Clear and Transparent Compensation Details
Recruiters must be upfront about the salary and benefits of a potential role.
If there's any confusion or vagueness around compensation, you risk wasting the time of both candidates and clients.
If the hiring manager's preferred candidate reaches the final stages of the interview process only to drop out, turn down an offer, or attempt to negotiate, your client won't be pleased.
Now, they have to choose between finding more budget to meet the candidate's elevated salary expectations or going with their second choice.
Ensure that the job ad prominently features the salary band and details surrounding benefits are easily accessible, too.
This way, no one will waste their time applying, and the successful candidate is more likely to accept the offer promptly.
#14 Quick and Easy Offer Acceptance
Of course, unrealistic salary expectations are not the only reason candidates drop out of the hiring process at the offer stage.
Some get a better offer elsewhere, others hold out for other roles they've recently interviewed for, and a few candidates get cold feet after meeting the hiring manager and learning more about the role.
Furthermore, some candidates drop out due to personal reasons or a change in circumstances.
This means that, unfortunately, you'll never be able to entirely eliminate drop-outs during the offer stage, but there are some actions you can take to minimise this issue.
Make your offer process as quick and easy as possible.
When a client makes their final decision, trigger an automated offer letter to be sent directly to the candidate.
The process of signing contracts and other documents can also be automated, reducing the admin on all sides.
Speeding up and simplifying this process will reduce confusion, make the candidate feel valued by their future employer, and ensure they feel their future job is truly secure.
This way, the candidate accepts the offer faster.
It also means they can hand in their notice at their current job — and begin their new role — sooner.
#15 Continuous Process Evaluation
Recruitment leaders no longer need to simply guess why they're seeing the results they're seeing.
The days of making decisions based solely on gut instinct are — thankfully — in the past.
Now, recruitment analytics tools gather and analyse performance data and feedback, empowering you to derive critical insights that will take your agency to the next level.
With recruitment analytics platform OneUp, you can track key metrics in real time, understand your recruitment pipeline, and drive your team to high performance.
Custom dashboards empower you to track individual and team goals, while intuitive visualisations make it easy to spot any issues within your processes and swiftly fix them.
Keen to try out some creative hiring ideas? With OneUp, you'll get feedback in real-time, allowing you to make a decision on whether to continue with your new strategy or discard it.
Track the metrics that matter most to you and automate reports to get regular updates sent directly to your inbox.
OneUp boasts a suite of motivational tools, such as competitions, leagues, and missions, allowing you to gamify day-to-day recruitment work and drive recruiters to hit their targets — faster.
Use this real-time information to make data-driven decisions about your processes. This will improve efficiency and effectiveness, slashing your time to hire without sacrificing quality.
#16 Adopt Mobile-Friendly Applications
Some 50.48 per cent of global web traffic comes from mobile devices, compared to 48.51 per cent from desktop browsing, according to research from Statcounter.
And the proportion of people who prefer to interact online on a mobile device is only going to grow, with younger generations more likely to rely on mobile devices than older generations.
This is why mobile-friendly applications are so important — especially when recruiting graduates.
Many end-to-end recruitment platforms come with an app, making mobile applications easy, while others automatically optimise the process for mobile devices.
If your agency or client has built the application form themselves, it's vital to ensure it has a responsive design.
This will automatically change the formatting of the application form to ensure a smooth user journey on mobile.
When candidates and recruiters are not experiencing the confusion and technical issues caused by clunky application forms designed only for desktop browsers, your time to hire should drop.
#17 Promote Internal Referrals
Internal referrals are a surefire way of cutting down time to hire.
When existing employees refer a candidate, the trust and verification stages of the hiring process are expedited.
Many employees have an extensive network of professionals within their industry, from people they went to university with to former colleagues they loved working alongside.
And most employees would not refer a candidate they did not want to work with again or someone they considered a risk.
After all, they don't want to put their own reputation on the line in exchange for a short-term incentive.
As a recruiter, you're constantly trying to tap into these high-quality professional networks.
But attracting qualified candidates can be difficult — especially in niche sectors.
So why ignore one that's sat right in front of you?
Launch an internal referrals scheme with a seamless user journey and strong incentives.
You can achieve this quickly and easily by investing in employee referral software, which does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
#18 Map the Entire Hiring Journey
Slashing your time to hire is about making every part of the hiring process as efficient as possible.
To achieve this, you'll need to start from the beginning, examine every activity within the process, and then improve it.
Start by visualising every step of the process from the perspective of a recruiter, a candidate, and a client.
For recruitment leaders, it's worth doing this with a senior recruiter who knows the hiring process inside and out.
To give yourself a 360-degree view of your recruitment journey, taking candidate and client feedback on board is vital during this exercise.
At every step of the journey, consider:
- How could this segment of the hiring process be made faster?
- Are there any unnecessary steps in the hiring process that could be discarded?
- Who is involved with this step of the recruitment journey — and is every stakeholder necessary?
- Would adding extra actions or milestones here ultimately speed up the hiring process as a whole?
- Are there any tech tools that could expedite this part of the recruitment journey?
#19 Embrace Continuous Improvement
Finally, never rest on your laurels.
Recruitment is constantly changing, with new technology constantly coming to market, economic fluctuations and generational characteristics impacting hiring trends.
You must always be on the hunt for the latest tools, techniques and practices that will empower you to refine your agency's hiring process.
After all, recruitment leaders must strive to anticipate new hiring trends and equip their teams with the knowledge and technology they need to thrive in tomorrow's recruitment landscape.
Closing Thoughts: Accelerating Recruitment with OneUp
There are many ways agency leaders can effectively reduce their time to hire, boosting recruitment success.
To recap, here are 19 top strategies for cutting time to hire:
- Streamline the hiring process
- Leverage advanced ATS solutions
- Optimise job listings
- Enhance the candidate experience
- Utilise AI and automation tools
- Focus on effective sourcing
- Prioritise responsive communication
- Streamlined interview scheduling
- Build and maintain a talent pipeline
- Facilitate collaboration with hiring managers
- Implement targeted recruitment practices
- Utilise digital hiring platforms
- Clear and transparent compensation details
- Quick and easy offer acceptance
- Continuous process evaluation
- Adopt mobile-friendly applications
- Promote internal referrals
- Map the entire hiring journey
- Embrace continuous improvement
It's vital to invest in cutting-edge tech designed to increase efficiency in order to fully implement most of these strategies and successfully minimise your time to hire.
OneUp integrates seamlessly with any recruitment strategy.
Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to access the real-time data you need to streamline and enhance your recruitment processes.
Meanwhile, its performance-tracking capabilities and motivational tools encourage your team to work harder and faster, further driving down time to hire.
To find out more about how OneUp could help reduce your time to hire, book your demo here today.
