Procrastination in Hiring: Is It Costing You Business?

“It’s not like I need their job. If it takes them a week to respond to a resume like mine for a job of this importance, they’re not the kind of company I want to work for. I move fast and I can already see that my style won’t fit their culture.”

This is an actual quote from a candidate who was put off by procrastination in hiring on the part of a prospective new employer. Slow hiring severely hurts your recruiting and ultimately your overall business success. Experts agree that at most companies, related costs exceed tens of millions of dollars each year.

Why Slow Hiring Hurts

The negative impacts of procrastinating in hiring are widespread. They touch virtually every stakeholder in your organization:

• You lose out on top talent. Currently employed top performers – including key passive candidates – quickly become inundated with recruiting requests. The top 10 percent of all talent are generally gone from the market within 10 business days. The recruiting loss from missing a single innovative recruit can be over $1 million.
• You have to pay new hires more because they will be bid on. There will be more time for other firms to woo your desired candidates if you have an extended hiring process. Salary demands will inevitably increase as a result. You may be able to pay as much as 25 percent less if you make a fast decision than you would after an individual realizes their current market value.
• Revenue and productivity decline. A lengthy hiring process means that key positions can go unfilled for extended periods of time. You may reason that such vacancies save salary dollars – but the smartest leaders know better. The damage caused by having a business-critical role open for longer than necessary may be as high as $5,000 a day. A vacant seat cannot create or capture value.
• Quality suffers. You may assume that taking more time to make hiring decisions results in a better employee. You would be wrong. The longer you take, the lower the on-the-job performance of new hires will be. A secondary result of having top candidates drop out of contention is you are left with only average and weak talent. This negates any extra time you may have devoted to decision making.
• Your employer value proposition is hindered. The image of being a slow hiring decision maker spreads like wildfire. Social media sites like Glassdoor.com almost always reveal how long it takes companies to complete their recruitment processes. Even more importantly, top prospects view the long time it takes you to hire as emblematic of your corporate culture. They view their experience with you as indicative of what it would be like to work for you.
• You lose your competitive edge. A competitive recruiting advantage allows your company to win a higher number of head-to-head battles with your top competitors. When you lose the best performing people directly to a quick-acting competitor, their innovation and productivity rates rise while yours plummet.
• Employees and customers feel the pain. You cannot be myopic when it comes to the damaging effects of slow hiring. Employees will notice as they are expected to do double duty and cover for vacancies. This hurts morale and retention rates. Customers are affected by slower and degraded service. Nobody wins.

Do you need to accelerate your recruitment process for better business results? Consider a partnership with the executive hiring experts at BrainWorks. Read our related posts or contact us today to set up an initial consultation.