You’ve found the perfect candidate who’s gone through round after round of interviews with your team. Everyone loves the candidate’s cultural fit, skills, and experience. It’s time to make an offer so you can close the requisition and focus on other open reqs. But sometimes that last mile of the hiring process can drag on and on, all the while leaving the door open for the candidate to be wooed by another prospective employer.
Losing a preferred candidate to a competing offer is a valid concern for HR and recruiting professionals who invest heavily into the hiring process. HR pros and recruiters conduct, on average, three or more interviews with the offered candidates. Almost half of offer rejections are due to the candidate accepting a competing offer. Furthermore, organizations with high-performing recruitment functions close reqs quickly, have “40 percent lower new-hire turnover, and they’re able to fill vacancies 20 percent faster than companies with reactive tactical recruiting functions.”
So, what can you do to speed up the contract handling stage of hiring new employees?
Get to the offer stage quickly
It should go without saying but the longer it is before a candidate gets to the offer stage, the longer that candidate has to pursue multiple opportunities. This increases the risk that another employer will seal the deal faster than you can. By streamlining your sourcing and interview process, you’ll not only save people’s time who shouldn’t be involved in the process to begin with but you’ll also get to a hiring decision faster.
Cut down on interview rounds by consolidating as many stakeholders as possible into a single on-site or two. Also, move as quickly as possible to trim down the amount of time elapsed between rounds.
Make it easy for the HR team to put together an offer
Once a hiring decision has been made, and it’s time to extend an offer, your team should be able to move at warp speed. Create a library of templatized offer content such as offer letters, corporate overviews, benefits summaries, and any other standard information that you regularly include in offers.
Eliminate time lost to pushing paperwork
Managing offer paperwork can be a time-suck for both your team as well as the candidate. The hassle of creating a new offer package document, converting it to .pdf, and attaching it to an email for the candidate to download, print, sign, scan, and email back to you can certainly slow things down on both sides of the table. Using a paperless solution can drastically reduce the amount of time spent while paperwork is being processed or ‘in transit’.
Leverage analytics and tracking
Monitor the candidate’s engagement with the offer and contract. Choose a document automation platform that allows you to see how often and how recently each candidate has viewed their offer package so that you can make sure they’ve received and reviewed it. Tracking engagement also provides you with helpful insight into when the right time is to follow up and begin pushing the process forward.
Maintain open communication channels
Ask candidates to be candid about any other roles they’re interviewing for as well as how those opportunities progress. Check in with candidates regularly throughout the interview process to establish open communication channels so that if and when you extend an offer; you have a healthy foundation for communicating. Be firm about an offer’s expiration to reduce the amount of ‘stall time’ a candidate can use to shop for multiple offers. On the flip side, be upfront with the hiring manager about communication and decision timeline expectations so that you can work together to move fast and close the requisition by landing the right candidate when you’ve found him or her.
Let us know what tips you have in the comments below!
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