Hiring a new employee presents challenges and comes with significant costs. Making the process as efficient as possible not only controls these costs but also helps you attract and retain the best candidates for your open positions. Further, when applicants have a positive experience with the hiring process, it reflects well on your brand. With unemployment hovering around historic lows, many talented job seekers have their pick of opportunities, making your image as an employer critical. For all these reasons, streamlining the hiring process is essential to optimizing the return your company realizes from its investment in new hires and, in turn, its ongoing success.
Challenges in the Hiring Process
Employers face numerous challenges in the quest to find the right people for the roles they need to fill. Hiring the right staff takes a substantial investment in time and financial resources, and completing the process correctly requires multiple steps and meticulous attention to detail.
It takes time to find the right fit.
Recent innovations and disruptions in many industries have created a demand for emerging skills that have not been widely developed in the current labor pool. As a result, it’s taking many businesses longer than ever to hire new employees. While there is a wide gap in hiring time between roles that are easier and more difficult to fill, in 2023, businesses are taking an average of 44 days to complete the hiring process. Companies in the energy and defense industries took significantly longer, averaging 67 days per hire, and professional services companies took a bit longer than most with 47 days. The longer your business takes to fill open positions, the less able it is to remain competitive in today’s constantly evolving markets.
Hiring involves substantial costs.
Hiring involves both easily quantifiable hard costs and soft costs that are more difficult to assess. In 2022, the Society for Human Resource Management estimated the average total cost to be $4,700 per hire, while some employers estimate their hiring costs may be three to four times a position’s annual salary. Even the simple act of creating a job description takes an average of three to five hours of HR staff time. Then, your staff will need to screen, track, and interview applicants, verify prior employment, complete any necessary background checks, and then onboard the new employee and supply them with the tools and equipment the need to do the job. This is all before the new hire receives a paycheck or employment benefits.
Hiring and onboarding require many steps and attention to detail.
Even after you’ve cleared the major hurdles of attracting, vetting, and selecting the right people, there are still many details that must be completed, such as ensuring new hires have properly filled out pre-employment paperwork like W-4s, I-9s, and direct deposit forms. Additionally, it’s important to remain in contact with all applicants throughout the hiring process, whether or not they’re the right fit. Job searches have become increasingly frustrating for job seekers in recent years as a result of a need for new, underdeveloped skills as well as a proliferation of “ghost job” postings that solicit applications for companies that don’t respond to them or even have an intention of hiring. By remaining in touch with all your applicants, you can boost your company’s brand and make it stand out as an employer of choice, helping you attract top candidates.
How to Streamline Hiring & Improve Your Bottom Line
Streamlining the hiring process is critical, especially in today’s competitive marketplace. Fortunately, there are concrete steps you can take to minimize costs, increase efficiency, and help ensure your company’s employment practices remain compliant with all state, federal, and industry regulations.
Implement HR & recruiting software.
A robust and reliable software solution can revolutionize your hiring process, allowing you to easily track and manage candidates throughout the hiring journey, ensure consistency in onboarding, and maintain compliance with labor and data security laws. You can also use today’s HR software to automate routine tasks and build workflows to create seamless processes for recruitment, selection, hiring, onboarding, and more.
Get help with back-office tasks.
Back-office responsibilities like administering payroll, workers compensation, and employee benefits take a lot of time and attention to detail. Mistakes can be costly. When you partner with a company that specializes in performing these tasks, you can save immense amounts of staff time, which you could then put to profitable use. A workforce solution provider will also help ensure your business practices are aligned with evolving regulations, ensuring you remain compliant as the regulatory environment changes and your business grows.
Employer Staffing Solutions Group is the premier workforce solutions provider. We provide expert back-office support as well as HR and recruiting software that works for our partners 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our advanced applicant tracking system allows for automated screening and centralized management of job candidates, making the hiring process more efficient and reliable and generating measurable time and cost savings. To learn more about streamlining your business processes, subscribe to ESSG’s blog.
About the Author
ESSG
Founded in 2005, by an ex-labor law attorney, a financial banker, and a business development expert, Employer Solutions Group's purpose is to help businesses (of any size) , lower the operating costs that come with having employees. Partnering with ESG to assume these responsibilities will increase your company's profitability, decrease employee turnover, so you can stay focused on your business' mission. Someone once asked our CEO what business he was in. His response: “We are in the business of helping people”.
