5 ways to speed up your recruitment process

In the fast-paced world of recruitment, speed is business critical. Without an ultra-efficient recruitment process, with time-saving measures implemented at every step, you could be losing out on talented candidates. Whether they see a competitor’s job advert before yours, don’t see yours at all, or drop out because of a slow process, speed (or lack thereof) is often the nail in the coffin. We’ve honed in on 5 ways that you can speed up the process without compromising on quality so that you never miss out on great candidates and perfect placements again.

1. Ensure your job advert is optimised

Your job ad will determine whether you even make it off the start line in the race to place. Without effective optimisation candidates either won’t see your ad or they won’t want to apply – the result is the same. Optimising your advert for search engines and job board algorithms is therefore essential, although don’t forget to also optimise for humans – it’s the humans you want to attract, after all.

There are two important elements to get right when it comes to creating a job advert that will be found in searches by relevant candidates – content and structure. What you include in your job advert and how you structure it. First, the basics – get these right and see your time to apply rate reduced. Candidates scanning job boards and Google for Jobs will look for these and potentially keep scrolling if they don’t see them:

Title – Keep it standardised and short. This is not the pace to get creative. Candidates will search for job titles they know and job boards will prioritise those search terms.

Salary – Salary transparency not only encourages a more diverse range of applicants, it will net you more applications. Research from CV-Library shows that including a salary leads to an average of 20% more applications than job ads without one. Let’s face it – salary is a primary job search motivator so why wouldn’t you want to know what the renumeration is before you apply?

Location – Always add a location, even for a remote position, as not only will it help candidates immediately see whether a job is suitable for them, this kind of structured data helps search engines and job boards to pick it up in keyword searches. Make it as detailed as possible. CV-Library has also found that adverts that include the county and town receive 8% more applications than average and those that also include the post code receive a huge 31% more applications.

Length – Data from Wave’s Candidate Attraction Playbook has found that an average of 300-350 words is the sweet spot for candidates – that is the length that receives the highest percentage of applications. Not too long (a job advert is NOT a job description) but not too short, putting it in danger of missing key details.

Next, you need to structure your content. Remember to keep bullet points to a maximum of 5 per list and weave in keywords so that they read naturally. We recommend including 6 elements of content in the following order:

1. Introduction – the hook: immediately attract and engage candidates.
2. Company pitch: the organisation a candidate would be working in is important but keep it brief.
3. Role responsibilities: How does the role fit into the business and what are the key responsibilities – keep it succinct so as not to overwhelm.
4. Experience and skills: Again, keep these to the essentials. State what are the must-haves and what are the nice-to-haves.
5. Benefits: end on a high! Importantly, understand which benefits sell – flexible working, wellbeing initiatives, caring support and extra holiday trumps a ping pong table in the office and beers on a Friday.
6. How to apply: this may seem obvious but make it crystal clear how to apply to the job (and avoid a long process) – make it easy for your candidates!

2. Utilise your CRM

Before you even post your jobs to job boards, check your candidate database first. This may feel like an extra step that will cost you time but that won’t be the case if you find one or more relevant candidates that you have previously vetted. A recruiter’s CRM is like their little black book. It is – or should be if it’s maintained properly – a goldmine of candidates with the potential to place given the right opportunity. And yet all too often it gets forgotten while recruiters race to get their job ads out onto the job boards.

However, similarly what happens all too often is that those recruiters receive applications from candidates already in their database. Research from The Marketing Junction suggests that, on average, a third of candidates applying for jobs through job boards were already on an agency’s CRM. Imagine the time (not to mention the money) that could be saved if those candidates had been contacted directly. Top tip to make searching your CRM faster and easier? Invest in tech that makes it part of the process, automatically uncovering CVs from your database that match your job details before you choose the platforms to post your job to.

3. Use data to pinpoint when and where to post jobs

This is a huge time saver. Armed with the knowledge of when candidates are most active and which job boards provide the most quality applications, you can help to ensure that your job advert is getting in front of the right candidates as soon as you post it. This is critical as Wave data taken from its Candidate Attraction Playbook has shown that the majority of applications are received within either 24 hours or 48 hours of a job being posted, with applications dropping off significantly in the days following. That’s largely because job board algorithms prioritise fresh jobs so the more time that passes and the more jobs that are posted, the less likely it is that candidates will see your job.

This is why it is vital to know when and where to post your jobs in order to get to the candidates you need before the competition does. The best way to gain data that is directly relevant to your sector and your jobs is via tech that will make recommendations based on live data. However, you can always talk to your job board account managers who will be happy to show you stats. The following data is taken from WaveTrackR:

When – Wave data shows that the majority of candidates apply for jobs at the beginning of the week, on Mondays and Tuesdays. As for time, posting between 9-10am will ensure that your ad will be ready for the job search rush from 10am-12pm and the slower but consistent traffic in the early afternoon. There is a slight caveat to this – those sectors which advertise a high proportion of shift-based roles get greater activity at the weekend than those with traditional 9-5 roles.

Where – Wave data has revealed that a huge 85% of jobs are posted on job boards and they receive an 83% share of all applications. But when faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of job boards, how do you know which are right for your jobs? How do you know which are going to provide you with quality applications at pace? One word – data. Personalised recommendations based on data directly related to your job details is the most accurate but Wave’s industry-wide data gives a good overview. Here are a few key stats:

• Totaljobs accounts for just 3.2% of all jobs posted to job boards but received the highest percentage of applications (35%).

• Application quality and hire data is key. CV-Library were second to Totaljobs in terms of application volume but received less ‘bad quality’ applications (those that recruiters rejected) and double the percentage of ‘good quality’ applications (those that recruiters deemed qualified and took forwards) than Totaljobs. CV-Library also produced more hires than Totaljobs (40% to Totaljobs’ 34%).

• The 3 job boards producing the highest average numbers of applications per job are all niche – and they are producing between double and treble the overall average of 23. This proves the value of niche boards, especially in sectors with high numbers of jobs, labour shortages or a need for specialist skills.

4. Advertise on your website and on social media

Job boards aren’t your only option and limiting your job advertising to one medium will mean limiting your reach and therefore likely increasing time to hire. This doesn’t mean that you should post everywhere to cover all bases. In fact, that could have the opposite effect as if you’re not targeted in your approach, the likelihood is that you’ll receive a greater percentage of ‘bad quality’ applications – and that will only slow down the process as you wade through a host of unsuitable CVs. However, there are platforms that are worth posting jobs to.

We would recommend that you always post to your website – if you already have a jobs page it’s free and you’ll capture candidate details into your own ecosystem, plus control the candidate journey from beginning to end. Optimise your jobs for Google for Jobs, create a first-class candidate journey and set up a registration feature so that you can retain relevant CVs. Not only will you increase the quality applications you receive, you’ll be creating a talent pool that you can turn to for future jobs, building a pipeline that will help speed up your recruitment process in the long term. Research from Wave’s Candidate Attraction Playbook has shown that only 12% of jobs are currently posted to recruitment websites and yet they receive 16% of all applications, which is a great advert for posting to your website more.

Advertising on social media sites, in particular LinkedIn, has also gained traction in the past few years. It’s an investment but recruiters are seeing good results. Of course, recruiters can also share jobs in their personal feeds, which will reach their individual network but will also often be shared more widely.

5. Utilise all tools your tech provides

Speed is what tech does effectively and efficiently. As long as your tech stack is integrated well and you understand how to use the tools it offers, your tech can be a huge time saver. Here are a few examples of the tools that can help speed up the recruitment process:

• Multi-poster – the ability to post your job to multiple platforms (job boards, website, social media sites) in one action is a huge time saver. Throw in automatically generated, data-powered recommendations on where and when to post and the candidate attraction part of the process got a whole lot quicker.
• Job scheduler – Scheduling your job to post at the time that candidates are most active means that you can write the ad as soon as you have the brief and then schedule it to post at a specific time. Wave data has found the average job receives a massive 80% uplift in applications if it’s scheduled rather than immediately posted to job boards.
• AI job advert drafting – An AI tool that helps you to draft job adverts and structures them so that they’re optimised for job boards and search engines can hugely speed up the initial job ad creation stage. Use it as a draft and add in your human touch and you’ll be able to achieve an optimised, high quality job ad in a fraction of the time it might normally take.
• Email and offer letter templates – one of the reasons candidates drop out of the process is a lack of timely communication, yet we also know that it can take a considerable amount of time to respond to every single applicant. Templates that auto-populate candidate and job info are hugely useful for this, allowing you to keep on top of communication without a drain on your resources.

And an extra tip – prioritise the candidate experience

Sometimes to increase efficiency, you have to take a step back. Speeding up the recruitment process will only happen if the candidate experience is positive, keeping them engaged, informed and in the process right up to offer and acceptance. Be a candidate and walk through the steps they have to take, noting down where the pain points lie and what improvements can be made.

A balance of speed and quality

Speeding up the recruitment process is essential if you want to attract and retain high calibre candidates up to the point of placement. However, it is equally essential that you don’t ever cut corners to prioritise speed above everything else or you won’t achieve the right results. There has to be a balance between speed and quality – get that right and your entire process will be substantially improved.