The recent image of a 100KM traffic jam on the expressway from Beijing (China) was truly impressive. We are talking about a 50-lane expressway (no kidding… 50 LANES!!!) to bring people from Beijing to the south. On that particular day a total of 750 million people tried to head home to their family for the national October holiday. That number alone is sheer madness and must be a total nightmare for anyone involved, from traveller to public authorities. Here is why I think this picture of the traffic jam in Beijing is very much a visualization of how our recruitment funnels too often are organized.
So let me bring this picture of an epic traffic jam in Beijing to recruitment near you and use it as an analogy of the way we have dis-organized our recruitment funnels. We have often built express lanes of mobile optimized application forms, fast-track procedures and innovative matching algorithms, only to find a bottle neck at the end of it… the hiring manager. No matter how many lanes we add, and even if we end up with a 50-lane talent acquisition expressway, we will have the tollgate of the hiring manager at the end of it. Everyone appears to be in a hurry. Candidates expect a quick response and fast procedure. Recruiters want to ‘score’ the right candidate as fast as possible to meet their placement metrics and hiring manager indicate that they need a new person on their team fast only to be responsible for the slow down of the process at the end.
So why and where exactly does it go wrong when everyone seems to prefer a fast process? The answer lies in scheduling and availability. A study amongst hiring managers in Germany found that three-quarters (76% to be exact) of them indicated that their lack of availability resulted in delays in the application process. A similar percentage indicated to be sure that they had lost applications in the process as a result of the delays. So regardless of the process we develop, we need to deal with this issue of scheduling as a priority in order to fix recruitment traffic jams. The good news is that hiring managers will be on board, since they also want a fast process.
Usually a hiring manager is involved in the scoping of the vacancy, after which the application process then goes into a black box, only to re-emerge at the stage of short-listed candidates for an on-site job interview. This is usually where the delay happens since a hiring manager will find it hard to carve out time in their calendars for back-to-back interviews in the short term. What if you could keep the hiring manager involved throughout and prevent a black box in the process altogether? If you use video interviews in your recruitment process, a hiring manager can see that his or her input is being used in the actual interview script, they can watch a long-list of candidates with a combination of CV and video. You will even find it easer to schedule first-round interviews online at a time and date that is convenient to both hiring manager and candidate. Implementing video in your process can lead to a reduction of your time-to-hire of up to 60% (study: Aberdeen). Using video interviews is the only tool that helps you reduce your time-to-hire. All other tools only lengthen the process (study: Glassdoor).
No more traffic jams or hiring manager tollgates. It is time for fast-lane recruitment using video! Happy Hiring!
