How To Win The War On Talent: Cut Down Your Interview Process

No matter the time of the year, one thing is certain: Every company wants to hire top talent. And while every company is seeking their top candidate, every top candidate is also seeking their next employer.

More often than not, candidates are interviewing with multiple companies at the same time before making a decision at the end of their job search. We recently conducted an online survey and found that among the criteria such as : Company culture, job, career progression as well as salary, one criteria was critical in the decision making process: The interview process.

While interviews are a vital and necessary step to make a hiring decision, how many interviews are too many? We surveyed 200 candidates from our data base and found that 90% of candidates removed themselves from the interview process if the interview process exceeded 4 interviews as they found the interview process too long.

What we found interesting, was that this finding aligned with some data shared by Google's data analytics team in 2016. After looking at 5 years of interviewing data and feedback, they found that it takes an average of four interviews to hire a candidate. After the 4th interview, there was no real distinction on the hiring teams' confidence about the candidate.

So why does this matter? While the war for talent will only get more competitive, it's important to put your best foot forward as a potential employer in order to ensure that the top talent chooses to join your organisation. Not only do too many interviews cause a higher candidate drop out rate, but it can also affect your business in other ways such as cost per hire, team morale, & revenue. Given this dilemma, how can you ensure that you don't have a high candidate drop out rate during your hiring process?

1. Streamline Your Interview Process: It's important to have a clear idea of what you are looking for in a candidate, and before you start your hiring process make sure that the people involved in the hiring panel understand their role in each step as well as questions they will be asking. This will help keep your process fair, smooth and aligned with everyone on the hiring team as well as give a clear overview to the candidate during the interview process

2. Align on time and interview questions: How many interviews are too many? Try to keep your process to a maximum of 4 steps, within this its important to establish what each step of the process will focus on (Attributes/ time) once this is established, make sure that it is consistent so each candidate has the same experience.

3. Move Quickly: Remember, candidates are often interviewing with 4-5 other companies as well as yours before they make their decision, a process that takes too long will lead to a higher risk of candidates choosing a company that made an offer faster.

4. Communicate: Feedback is vital. Not only will your candidates feel respected, but let's say for some reason there is a delay in the interview process e.g. A hiring manager is on holiday, or you are finishing first round of interviews and hope to make a decision by a certain date - by communicating what is going on, your candidates will feel taken care of, and that their time is respected as well as give you an opportunity to also gauge where they are with other companies in their decision making process.

5. Trust The Process: If you have a clear interview process with consistent questions as well as feedback, then you should be able to trust your process instead of going with your gut. Often times, hiring managers question their ability to make a decision and want to compare candidates against each other - this leads to delays in the interview process as there will always be "more candidates out there." If you have interviewed a healthy amount of candidates for a role, don't be afraid to make an offer instead of waiting for more candidates.

We have over 20 years of experience in helping tech companies scale by streamlining their interview process. If you are looking to streamline your interview process, get in touch hello@optimyze1.com