I’m sure anyone reading this has been in the position of missing out on “that dream candidate.”
FUN FACT: the best talent is on the market for an average of 10 DAYS!
Maybe they wasted your time, maybe they wanted too much money or… WAIT A SEC, maybe you took too long and they got tired of waiting!!
Taking away the fact I’m a recruiter and have an interest in quick and seamless hiring, a slow hiring process has to be one of the biggest reasons any company struggles to get the very best talent for a role.
Think about it, if I’m in the top 2% of Data Scientist in London when you’re hiring why would I wait and wait when 10 other companies are crawling over broken glass to hire me? Is it even worth mentioning all that time spent hiring that could be spent on billable client work, building products or basically anything else?
So, it’s a major issue but what can you do to speed up the process and bring the very best people back in play?
1. Create an accurate job description, or at least create a job description 😊
Sounds obvious I know but the last thing anyone wants is to go through a brief telephone interview, then a technical test and get to the face to face interview only to discover that, for example, a candidate is actually looking for a Python data science role that is research focussed and not client facing but didn’t have a spec to realise before all that wasted time.
Of course, don’t lead with it but for the same reason as above talk about salary relatively early so you know you aren’t wasting each other’s time. “It’s not about the money” only goes so far even with the best role ever.
3. Be proactive and have candidate pools
Fire fighting to hire is time consuming but it’s also a good way to make sure you find the “best obviously available talent” as opposed to the best talent. If you can, host events, be active on relevant communities or even just attend certain events relevant to your industry and you’ll have a warm group of great talent that are all ears next time you’re hiring. Hackathons, coding challenges etc are great to build trust with top tech talent
4. Think about using a recruiter
I had to get it in there 😃 Seriously though, do you have 8-10 hours a day to hunt the best people on the market and screen them? Do you have 10 years experience doing that on a daily basis? Probably not but a good recruiter can give you that. If recruiters will cost you £15,000 to fill a senior data science role and it would cost you £25,000 in project delays to recruit slowly direct then what’s the benefit? Might as well get someone asap.
5. Set realistic expectations
“I want a Python developer that used to work for Google on 180k but is looking to wind down that responsibility and come to our offices for 45k.”
Okay, that’s an extreme example, but consider what you need vs perfection and be happy with that, people can always be trained if they have the right mindset and team fit.
6. Consider training
A bit of a follow on from 5 but if you’re using a niche tool you know almost nobody has, will it take you longer to train somebody to use that tool (when they can also do other things) or will it take longer to wait for someone who has already used it to come along (which is also entirely out of your control.)
7. Ask around internally
How many times have you interviewed someone only to find out they’ve known Bob in X department since school…it might have taken you 5 weeks to find the candidate but it would’ve taken Bob 5 seconds
8. Referral schemes
Everyone internally “should” mention someone they know if you’ve followed point 7 but how proactive will they be? Offer an incentive…everyone wins 😊
9. Keep it simple
I’m sure 25 people would love to meet your new potential hire and see how they will fit but that doesn’t mean they need to. Keep it to 3 interviews max to keep candidates engaged and make sure you don’t lose people to time.
10. Stop testing everyone
A tricky one, obviously you need to know how good somebody is at JavaScript or Python or whatever it might be but how excited would you be to complete test number 20 since you’ve been on the job market alongside face to face interviews?
Spend time with people first, test them formerly later and you’ll keep them engaged. Strangely, most candidates have less full diaries when somebody says they’ll speak to them.
So, there’s my thoughts, hope it helps, more to follow on other areas within recruitment so please follow, subscribe etc to keep updated.
#recruitment #technology #datascience