How long does hiring even take?

How long is a piece of string? That's the short answer to how long hiring takes, but lets dive deeper!

Hiring can take as long or as short as you want it to, need it to, or as long as it takes to find someone suitable. What I’ll cover today is the long and short of a standard recruitment process, ways to move it along a bit quicker and a few shortcuts.

Your Hiring Timeline

There are key elements to effective hiring and they all take time. You don’t want to skip these steps because they are critical to ensuring you’ve done a thorough process.

✨ Preparation: In the preparation phase you’ll start early activities that will shape the success of your hiring. You’ll want to define the job role, understand the responsibilities, if they have changed or are to stay the same as the previous person who did it. You’ll determine if the qualifications required have changed and the skills you really need to do the job. You might find that this can take longer if your needs are complex or have changed significantly since you last hired. You’ll use this information to draft the advertisement and determine who your target market is which will inform where you’ll advertise the role.

General Time Frame: 3 days - Week

Long Time Frame: Can take weeks if you don’t prioritise this work, I’ve known Managers to sit on this task for months even because they didn’t carve out time in their no-doubt busy schedule.

Shortcuts: Get the staff member who is leaving (if you have time) to update their own position description. Bring on a Hiring Partner to help draft an engaging advertisement!

✨ Advertising and sourcing candidates: This is where you take your advertisement to the market, you’ll look at all the channels to tell people about your vacancy and determine which are the most suitable. You’ll need to allow time in the market for your role to be noticed by the right audience as well.

General Time Frame: 2-3 Weeks

Long Time Frame: if candidates aren’t deemed suitable you may need to extend the advertising time for a week to a full restart which could add a month to your timeframe.

Shortcuts: get great advice on the best channels to use, a Hiring Partner will make sure your message gets to exactly the right audience.

✨ Screening and Interviewing: Shortlisting your candidates if you have quite a few can take a real time commitment, and in some roles you can book interviews for the next day, but if the role is in a professional field you may need a few days to a week’s notice for candidate’s availability.  

General Time Frame: 1-2 Weeks

Long Time Frame: This can be extended due to availability of the candidates or yourself to interview, it can also be protracted depending on how long it takes you to review the candidates who have applied. Also if you decide to do multiple rounds of interviewing.

Shortcuts: review applications as they come in, it may be 10-15 minutes per day or every couple of days, but it’s worth it to start calling your preferred candidates from day one!

✨ Assessments and Offer: Once you have identified your preferred candidate(s) it’s time to assess them. That can be as simple as a reference check or as complex as pre-employment medicals and psychometric testing. Either way, whatever is required for your role, make sure you calculate this into your time frame. After being confident of who you want to offer, the negotiation phase can be as quick as a phone call or extend to a few phone calls over the course of several days. 

General Time Frame: 1 day to 1 Week

Long Time Frame: If you have extensive screening criteria this can extend your time frame or if the candidate is entertaining more than one offer, this can take a few weeks.

Shortcuts: Using an experienced negotiator, like a Hiring Partner, to be a conduit to the negotiation process can reduce your timeframes to getting a successful outcome.

✨ Onboarding: You may have had to wait a day to a few weeks for your new employee to start, use this time to plan an excellent orientation for them into your organisation and their new role.

General Time Frame: 1 day to 4 Weeks

To sum up, a recruitment process can take as little as a few weeks if everything goes incredibly smoothly to several months if you haven’t been well-planned and efficient in your process.

This is where I come in, as a Hiring Partner, I can reduce these time frames with my expertise, my experience with drafting excellent advertisements, supporting you through all the key moments. Give me a call to talk about how we can make your next recruitment process a great one.

✨ Ash