There’s no sugar coating it: recruiting in today’s landscape is wild. Even a minor delay in the interview process can cause top candidates to lose interest and move on. With the understanding that speed is more important than ever, we spoke with two seasoned recruiters to share their proven methods for reducing time-to-fill.
Our hour-long conversation with Rachel Clark of Salesloft and Manisha Bavabhai of MURAL was brimming with helpful tips and tricks for faster hiring. (We definitely recommend watching the complete video at the bottom of this post!) But if you only have a couple minutes before you have to dash off to a debrief, we’ve collected a handful of quick highlights from their discussion.
1. Make hiring managers your best friend
The hiring manager often ends up setting the pace when hiring for a role, but there are a handful of things recruiters can do to encourage managers throughout the process. Manisha and Rachel recommend:
- Help them understand the market
Part of establishing trust with hiring managers is to help educate them so they grasp just how competitive the hiring environment currently is. Every recruiter knows that delaying a decision by a day or two can be the difference between closing a top candidate or losing them. Hiring managers, on the other hand, aren’t in the day-after-day hiring trenches and might need help to understand the importance of maintaining a sense of urgency throughout the process. - Be proactive
Rachel specifically recommends scheduling a hiring manager interview immediately after having a positive call with the candidate. While it might take a little time before the manager feels comfortable with this arrangement, this process tweak can have a massive impact on the speed of the hiring process and reduce the likelihood of a candidate waiting too long for the next step. - Building trust
Doing all you can to build trust with hiring managers. The more they feel comfortable offloading to the recruiting team, the more you’re able to influence the pace. In this clip, Manisha explains some of what she does to encourage trust right from the start ????
2. Better candidate communication = less wasted time
- Pre-closing the candidate
While loose ends are being tied up to deliver the offer, pre-closing can reduce the likelihood of any last minute surprises and also proactively surface outstanding questions or concerns that could delay the candidate from accepting the offer. - Text messaging
Manisha and Rachel are both big believers in communicating with candidates via text message. Not only does this help them get faster, more consistent responses, but texting is less formal and can help reinforce a personalized, white-glove candidate experience. - Establishing trust with candidates
Each time a recruiter speaks with a candidate provides an opportunity to build trust. If a candidate is treated with empathy, humanity, and respect, then they are much more likely to reciprocate by being open and honest. In this clip, Rachel and Manisha explain how this approach influences the way they communicate ????
3. Time-saving tools
- Calendar blocking
Especially when working with senior-level hiring managers, calendar blocking is a simple tactic that can play a big role in decreasing time-to-fill. In addition to reducing the amount of back-and-forth communication with a hiring manager, it also shows that you respect their time and busy schedule. - Scheduling automation
If you’re still scheduling interviews manually, it’s time to look into a solution like Calendly. Not only do scheduling tools make it dead simple to find an open time slot, but many offer reminder functionality that can help scare off ghosting. - Interview recording
Memories can be fickle, and it can be difficult for hiring teams to align on a candidate based on multiple, separate interviews. While Zoom recordings can be a good first step to combat the fallibility of memory, an interview intelligence platform like BrightHire streamlines the process of recording, sharing, and re-watching interviews across different candidates and teams. In this clip, Rachel and Manisha explain why sharing interview clips is so helpful in their roles ????
