Why Does Talent Recruitment Take So Long?
Recruiting talent is usually a reactive process — someone gives notice and all hell breaks loose. Depending on how much time your departing team member has given you (and it is never enough) and how long they have been in their role, it can sometimes take months to fill a mid-management role. Senior executive searches can take even longer.
The Typical Recruiting Process
Sometimes an HR department will take on the talent recruitment process on its own. Ads go up on the company website. Maybe a few Internet search sites are tapped. The recruiting team performs some quick searches on LinkedIn to find the low hanging fruit. This can sometimes lead to qualified candidates being identified. Sometimes.
Or an executive search firm can be called in, and often more time is spent on negotiating terms and identifying fresh talent. Whether it be contingency based or executive search, the fees for successful placement are very steep.
These firms then blast out emails to their mailing lists or network, search their databases, and try like heck to fill the vacancy as quickly as possible. The less time it takes them to hire someone, the higher their profit margin. And so the race begins.
A Flawed Model
This approach to talent acquisition reminds me of the Freakanomics example of how real estate agents take longer to sell their own homes and typically sell for more money than their clients. They are motivated to hold out for the best offer because all of the extra money goes directly into their pocket. However, when selling your home they will encourage you to take the first decent offer that comes along. The extra commission they might make on a higher offer later on is not enough to motivate them to continue advertising, holding open houses, and showing your home. The question becomes, who do they ultimately represent, the buyer or the seller?
In a similar fashion, the candidates you are presented with during the traditional recruiting process are all “a great fit” and you should make them an offer quickly before they are “snapped up” by your competition. This raises the question as to their motivation. They want to get paid.
The other drawback is that you can basically expect radio silence until the search firm has someone to show you. You have little control over the process, no contact with or information about potential candidates, and usually no control or insight into the data that has been collected.
And what happens if you end up hiring a less-than-ideal candidate? Not only have you paid a boatload of commission, but now you either have to suck up the problems a bad hire causes (plummeting morale, poor performance, missed opportunities) or go through the whole recruiting process again, likely with some severance costs as well. And we won’t even talk about the flawed concept of guarantees!
Slow and Steady Wins the Race
At Intellidig we work on a consultancy basis — either for a fixed or hourly fee — and our job is to search for people and for information about people. We do the heavy lifting in the recruiting process and let our clients make the hiring decisions, allowing them to focus on what they do best.
And while it might seem counter-intuitive, spending more time up front — defining the ideal candidate, being detailed and methodical in where to look, gathering all the pieces of the giant hiring puzzle and carefully putting them together — is ultimately a time-saver and much less risky approach in the end. The juxtaposition being, go slow to go fast.
At Intellidig our job is to search for people and for information
about people. We take the stress out of the hiring process. Our
clients make the hiring decisions.
We communicate and connect with our clients throughout a very transparent recruiting process:
- Recruitment research path
- Client vetting
- Candidate communication and conversion
- Candidate presentation
- Candidate selection
- Ongoing pipelining
At the end of every project, our client owns the data we have collected. Often this intelligence is the source of future hires — which can save even more time and money down the road!
Want to Learn the Secret to Finding the Right People Faster?
To find out more about Intellidig’s proven methodology to finding and attracting top talent for your organisation, request our soon-to-be-released whitepaper: How Research Makes Hiring Better.