Wait for it…
“That’s what she said!”
I saved you the trouble.
Being too long is a major problem in the world today. People aren’t willing to wait, primarily because they don’t have to. Baseball can’t attract a young audience because the kids don’t want to sit around for three hours, at a minimum, to find out the outcome of the game. Soccer is exploding in the U.S. because it’s 90 minutes and they don’t even stop the clock when someone is injured! No commercial breaks, except for a short halftime period.
People won’t read a 700 page book, they want 300. No one wants to watch a three hour movie, make it two. Why do we have to have an hour meeting, make it thirty minutes.
Being too long is not a weakness you want to have in todays world. Being too long is now a sign that you probably don’t really know what you’re doing. If you can’t be short and concise, you’re looked at as ‘old fashion’.
That’s what your candidates are thinking of your selection process. You try and tell yourself, and your leadership, that we ‘take our time’ because we want to ‘make the right decision’. But your competition is making those same decisions in half the time. You’re old fashion. You’re broken. You’re taking too long.
Moving fast used to be considered reckless. Older generations would tell us to ‘slow down’. Measure twice, cut once. But, what if I made a process where measuring once was all that was needed, and I could eliminate the second measure? Wouldn’t that be better?
The legacy of the recession in Talent Acquisition is this, you had less to do, so you filled that time trying to add value. There is a tipping point to adding value. You extending the length of your selection process at a point no longer adds value. You’re taking too long to make hiring decisions. I know this because I’m constantly hearing stories of candidates you want, accepting offers from other companies before you’re ready to make an offer.
You’re taking too long.
Measure twice does not say: Measure once. Wait 2 months. Repeat.
My current employer pulled off a phone screening, two sets of on-site interview in one week. They had a initial verbal offer ready at the end of the second set of interviews.
At same time, I had already spent two months going through the interview process with another company. For 6 weeks they had been trying to figure out when they wanted me to come in to interview again. After I told them the news, the recruiter contacted me and told me that they were pissed off at me. They really had wanted to hire me. I told the recuiter that they should not have been moving that slowly.
My dad, much older than any of us, said if you took more than one page for a business letter you were too long. The 2 month interview process isn’t necessarily a result of the recession it’s the result of people wanting to appear very busy. Job security.
Mike,
I do like Cowheard’s show, I wish it was on at a different time so I could catch it more often. My new fav is Lebotard.
Sports and HR, there’s always away to tie them together!
T
I don’t see any remedy to this anytime soon, unfortunately. Judging by your first paragraph, you must listen to Colin Cowherd of ESPN often. He uses the young people not having any patience for a 3 hour baseball game analogy all the time. Lol
Thanks goodness someone finally calls out the hiring process for what it is – too long. A friend of mine interviewed (phone) in early August, only to be told the onsite interview would be the first week of September. The hiring manager had a vacation – it was 1 week. The friend has an offer pending from another company, and the September meeting date will become history before the phone-interviewed company has a chance to even meet her.