Recruiting teams are constantly facing the challenge of finding and implementing new ways to stay up-to-date with today’s hiring demands. Year after year, technology and recruitment trends continue to change to keep up with the ever-shifting demands of the labor market. Candidate expectations continue to increase. The labor market continues to shift. And the cost of hiring continues to increase as the average hiring time lengthens.
Meanwhile, many businesses are applying the most recent recruitment innovations to keep up.
One such innovation is interview scheduling software. Like many software solutions, this software comes in many forms, paid and unpaid, that businesses can choose from to help improve their recruiting and interviewing processes. Although it is difficult to say, like other software solutions, which one is right for your company, interview scheduling software remains a serious asset to any recruiting endeavor.
Interview scheduling software can help you automate one of the most time-consuming tasks plaguing recruiters on a daily basis. The average recruiter spends two-thirds of their overall hiring time on the interview phase alone, according to Yello. During that time, recruiters spend 30 minutes to 2 hours on scheduling per candidate. Yes, per candidate. That means a recruiter could spend 10 hours alone on scheduling 5 candidates.
For larger enterprises and high turnover facing high-volume recruitment demands, that simply isn’t sustainable. You need a solution that can allow your recruiters to eliminate this massive time sink as much as possible. You need a solution that will speed up your time-to-hire and help you create a more cost-efficient and effective recruiting process. And that’s exactly what we’re going to look at today.
A slow time-to-hire can be what’s holding your hiring process back from its full potential. Time-to-hire is the gap between a recruiter making contact with a potential candidate and that candidate accepting an open position. In the United States, the time-to-hire across industries averages between 36 to 42 days, according to SHRM.
There are numerous benefits to speeding up your time-to-hire. The first of these is that a fast time-to-hire reduces the overall cost of recruitment. The average vacancy, according to Zippia, costs businesses $98 a day to fill. And this cost is more than budgeting for recruitment. While there are gaps in your workforce, other employees are forced to make up for the empty position. This may cause your current employees to work overtime to pick up the slack, which means overtime pay. This adds up over time, eventually becoming more costly than compensating a new employee.
Worse yet, a low time-to-hire can have a negative impact on current employee retention. The longer roles are left unfilled and other employees are asked to pick up the work, the more likely your current employees will suffer burnout. The strain of an empty position reduces productivity and risks a higher turnover rate in your workforce.
That means speeding up your time-to-hire by 5 days equates to nearly $500 saved. Therefore, a fast time-to-hire means a more cost-efficient hiring process. What’s more, the modern candidate expects recruiters and potential employers to respond quickly. A fast time-to-hire helps you meet this expectation.
To speed up your time-to-hire, consider eliminating the menial tasks from your hiring process. These include time-consuming tasks such as scheduling interviews. As we discussed, it takes recruiters 30 minutes to 2 hours per candidate they schedule. Eliminating scheduling from the hiring process gives the recruiters more time to focus on screening candidates and choosing candidates to move on to the next round.
If you’re looking for a tool to help you reduce your time-to-hire, look no further than asynchronous interviewing. In an asynchronous interview, unlike a traditional interview, each party in the interview records their part of the interview separately. In recruiting, these interviews begin when a recruiter records a single interview to provide all of their selected candidates. In turn, these candidates are then able to respond to the interview at a time of their convenience. Qualifi’s data has found that this approach to interviewing brought in 75.5% more responses than traditional interviews.
Asynchronous interviews are incredibly useful to the modern recruiter. As we’ve discussed, a short time-to-hire is key to building an effective hiring process. Asynchronous interviews do exactly that by eliminating the need for interview scheduling. What’s more, this all results in a better candidate experience as the candidate enjoys a more convenient interview process.
This method of interviewing is also known as a virtual interview. This is because, of course, the communication for both the recruiter and candidate is effectively only going virtual, unlikely live interviews.
Virtual/asynchronous interviews are:
There are so few hours in the day, but so much to do. You need an interview solution that can reach candidates outside of business hours and consequently allow you to reach as many candidates as possible. Regardless if your candidate is a stay-at-home parent or otherwise busy during typical business hours - interviewing outside of business hours improves the candidate experience.
In fact, Qualifi’s research has found there are numerous benefits to allowing candidates to interview outside of business hours. For example, when given the option, 43% of interviews are taken outside of typical business interview hours. What’s more, Qualifi’s on-demand phone interview platform brought in 75.5% more interviews than traditional methods with an average response time of 19 hours and 44 minutes.
You get all of this while also cutting down on recruitment times that are costing the organization time and money every day when you include on-demand phone interviews as part of your interview process.
With Qualifi, you can invite hundreds of candidates to interview overnight. Speed up your interview timeline by eliminating scheduling from your interview process. Decrease your time-to-hire through quick and easy asynchronous interviews. And offer an overall convenient interview experience with on-demand interviews that let your candidates interview at a time that’s right for them.
To get more insights on what on-demand interviewing can do for your recruitment process, check out Qualifi’s ultimate guide to interview scheduling.