At this time of year, hiring authorities may be kicking recruiting needs into the new year. The reality, however, is to have your new hire walk through the door in January the best time window to start the process may have already passed!
How long does a recruitment project take from start to finish? Well, the honest answer is it depends on a range of factors. What I will say is that 9/10 clients, when I have an initial conversation with them about a recruitment project, usually significantly underestimate the amount of time the process will take, so what are the factors that can influence this?
Your recruitment needs
What is the current situation around the recruitment need you have? Do you have a project starting which the prospective candidate(s) will deliver? Do you have a key person leaving that you want to replace? Is a handover period required for the incumbent to download information to the new recruit to allow for a smooth transition?
The worst-case scenario would be a senior commercial person leaving with information in their heads that no one else has. Or maybe you’re starting a new project with a key client with someone being the face of your company that you’re not 100% happy with. Or you’ve got an expensive freelancer on your books who is only going to be changed out later. Not a great way to get on the front foot with your client.
Your recruitment time frame
Identify the project start date, or your leaving employee’s last date in the business, less 2 weeks to allow for a reasonable transition period, then subtract a further 8-12 weeks. This is probably the minimum amount of time the hire will take.
Scarcity of skills
What’s your recruitment process? How many interviews will need to take place? What’s your candidate attraction strategy for the role?
Putting your internal processes aside for a minute, the answers to the above will be different depending on the position. My experience tells me numerous reasons exist for delays, but a primary one is the scarcity of the skills you’re looking for.
Having the right approach and strategy for each type of position categorised by scarcity, is key. Should your sourcing methods for recruiting a Pre-Construction Director and a Site Engineer be the same? In my view, one position could be filled via some competent contingent recruitment the other will require more of an executive search approach. If you’re looking at things from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ perspective for every hiring need you have you’re unlikely to get the results you’re after. And certainly not in reasonable timescales.
Being realistic about all of this from the start gives you the best chance of success.
Notice period
Notice periods vary from company to company. The more senior the position, the longer the notice period will be. Many mid-late career roles may have employees on three months’ notice. Director-level positions might be six months or even longer.
Sometimes exiting employees can negotiate their notice down – which could get someone to you quicker. Don’t bank on this though, as a previous employer is perfectly entitled legally to make someone work their full notice period. So, it’s best to view this as a bonus if it comes off rather than price it into your thinking.
Seasonal setbacks
As a Recruiter, holiday seasons are the bane of my life, and this isn’t just me being a miserable so-and-so. They make interview processes last longer than they would ordinarily and in the extra time there’s always the possibility that things can change. Delays are never a good thing in recruitment; for more on this, see my previous article ‘Time Kills Deals‘
Factoring in the summer break, school half terms, or religious holidays means you can help you pre-empt, if not altogether avoid potential seasonal delays, helping you streamline the recruitment process for the best results.
Built in backstops
A couple of the more frustrating things that can happen in recruiting: 1) when a candidate is offered the job but is then counter-offered and stays with their current company. 2) when a star candidate is offered the job but chooses to go and work with another company instead.
Of course, candidates have free will and this needs to be respected and sometimes things change in a way that no one could have anticipated. Can we, however, mitigate the risks of losing out at the 11th hour and having to start all over again? Yes.
The best defence on this is to have a quality shortlist and options – spread your bets. You may feel you only have the time to interview the top two candidates or even just one, but we need to resist the temptation to cut corners. If we lose that one interviewee or both in the process, we’re back at square one, and worse still, those other suitable candidates (eliminated earlier in the process), now aren’t available either. It may not be possible in every situation, but the goal should always be to have options – in case something goes wrong. Read more on this, in our article, ‘Trust the Process’.
Offer of employment
Big companies usually struggle with efficiently sending out offers of employment. If it requires three board-level signatures to issue a job offer you must factor this into your timelines.
Best practice on this would look like issuing a formal job offer within one week of verbally offering. If you can’t do this, then it’s important to manage candidates’ expectations and keep consistent contact until the offer arrives. I cover managing expectations in our article, ‘The C Words of Onboarding‘.
Talent pooling
In my view, some disciplines are so difficult to recruit that you should always be in a mode of looking for them. A ‘talent pool‘ is just a group of potential candidates. For the most difficult-to-recruit skills and in-demand people, I would recommend an approach that means you’re always open to having a coffee with a star candidate.
What this does is twofold; It keeps you networking with the people you need to be in touch with and it gives you a head start when you are actively looking.
Stakeholder management
Usually, from a hiring company’s perspective, there are at least two or three people involved in the recruitment process. People will often have different ideas about the importance of the recruitment project or how much of their time they should devote to it. The Regional Director who is thinking ‘big picture’ about the profitability of their bit of the business may recognise the importance of reacting quickly to get top talent to help them achieve their targets. The Contracts Manager who is day-to-day managing many of the schemes and is under immediate pressure may feel it’s not as much of a priority. This is a problem – we need everyone singing from the same hymn sheet!
Many, many times in my recruitment career I’ve experienced delays in a process because one hiring manager who understands what they need to do is slowed down by someone else who doesn’t. Don’t let this be you; get everyone’s buy-in at the start.
How slick is your onboarding?
If a prospective new employee verbally accepts a job offer, but then we make no contact for the six weeks before they start, we’re in for trouble. The onboarding period is a real area of danger where you could still lose out on your potential star employee – they could be countered by their current employer, or approached by another competitor, or they might decide that they don’t really want the upheaval of starting a new job. The potential cost of losing a candidate between the offer being made and the start date is huge in terms of the time investment that could go to waste. I recommend consistent, continuous contact in that interim period and the longer the notice period, the more of this you’ll need to do.
As a new prospective employer of a star candidate, you need to show empathy regarding the change that someone is making and the relationships they’re leaving behind, and the best antidote to this is to give them a head start building new ones with you. Arrange to meet them for a coffee or a visit on-site during their notice period to get a head start on what they’ll be doing on the project. Get them to meet the team socially – Christmas is a great time for this!
Don’t be complacent – keep in mind if they’re a star candidate and valuable, their existing employer will fight to keep them (well wouldn’t you if it was one of your best people?). They have one, three or even six months where they could be talked around into staying daily. These conversations might be with colleagues or even friends they’ve known for several years. But then the sum total of interactions they’ve had with you is four hours over three interviews. An additional couple of meetings will take up some of your time but it’s a lot better than having to start the search from scratch at the 11th hour.
Build this into your process as best practice – it’ll maximise your chances of making sure your star employee arrives without a hitch on day one.
So that’s it. These are the factors that will influence how long it’ll really take to fill that vacancy. If you’re starting to think about the new year from a hiring perspective, it probably needs to start now.
