What is time to hire?
Simply put, time to hire refers to the working hours it takes to recruit for a vacancy.
How long is the usual time to hire?
According to Glassdoor, the average time for the interview process in the UK was 27.5 days. This does not include candidate notice periods, some of which can be up to 3 months depending on the career level.
The current landscape
It is no surprise that Covid has completely changed the employment landscape. We’ve moved very quickly from low unemployment to a period of uncertainty. While unemployment at the time of writing stands at 3.6%, there were approximately 7.5 million furloughed workers recorded on the last ONS Survey in June 2020. Some will have since returned to work, but others will be wondering if they will face redundancy come October.
Recruitment Decisions
Whilst many companies are resuming recruiting activities, adjusting how you recruit is necessary to adapt to the changes in the market. HR Grapevine reported that some roles are receiving as many as 1000 applications per advert. This is a stark contrast to pre-Covid times and the need to screen 1000 CVs results in a significantly increased workload for internal teams.
As an employer, you might be trying to decide whether to recruit via your HR team or internal recruiters, use an online recruitment platform or to use a recruitment agency.
In all three instances, your internal interview processes will be largely the same. However, only a recruitment agency can help to minimise the additional workload. This frees up your HR team to be able to dedicate the time they need to implement/respond to the corona-virus pandemic and to make your interviewing process as streamlined as possible.
Why Use an Agency?
As previously mentioned, using an agency in the current climate is the only way to reduce the additional workload of screening through hundreds of CVs.
If you think about the average job advert, it is live for around 28 days. With the market as it is, you will not need 28 days’ worth of advertising. But, unless you use a free platform, you will still need to pay for the duration even if you end your advert early.
Additionally, agencies have more recruitment resources. Furthermore, while software exists that will automatically select a shortlist of CVs in exchange for a smaller fee, this software has proved to be unreliable. There are numerous instances of candidates emailing employers directly and securing a role after having been instantly rejected by these platforms.
A human recruiter will view every application they receive. This is because, from experience, we know that not every candidate is a keyword expert and for most roles, they should not have to be in order to submit an application.
However, in the current climate, an experienced agency’s resources can also prove to be invaluable beyond simply lightening your workload. Covid has resulted in a lot of job uncertainty and less vacancies. Therefore, when a role is advertised, there might be hundreds of applications but there might not be one suitable candidate among them. Not only will an agency be able to reliably sift through all of these applications, if it does turn out that none of the applications are suitable, an agency recruiter will already have begun sourcing or ‘headhunting’ suitable candidates for you.
Realistically, if you use an agency, you will not need to wait long to receive a good shortlist of candidates regardless of what the job market is doing. In most instances, the recruiter will also consult with you at each stage to ensure you find the best match for your company and for the role.
Effectively, recruitment is fraught with hidden costs. The cost of doing the process internally, time spent searching, advertising, and sometimes having to restart the entire process along with the loss of productivity of your existing team can soon outweigh the cost of using an agency.
Temporary or Permanent?
Temporary roles could be a great option for employers to consider. It allows you flexibility. As well as the usual reasons to hire a temp, this option could also be worth considering in place of permanent while there is so much uncertainty. For example, you can hire on a temporary basis for a trial period. If you are happy with the candidate or the uncertainty passes and you can offer permanent work, you can easily transfer the contract from temp to perm.
Call Amdas
Amdas offers temporary and permanent recruitment services. If you are currently struggling to decide what type of recruitment you should opt for, we will also consult with you to find the best solution. Our aim is to add value to the businesses we partner with and we do not charge unless we fill the vacancy for you. You can find our contact details here so please do give us a call.
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