- Recruitment Made Easy
- Posts
- Weekly Newsletter Vol. 5
Weekly Newsletter Vol. 5 - October 4, 2023
Generating your Lead Story…
Jobs that Pay Less than 100K Should Only Require 1 In-Person Interview
Hiring Manager: We would like to bring the candidate back for a 5th interview.
Recruiter: Okay… Is there something you haven’t been able to test them on?
Hiring Manager: No, we just want Jim to meet them.
Recruiter: I’ve followed up to let them know and they are no longer interested. It’s a 45 minute commute each way, plus gas, etc. They can’t afford to go back and forth this many times for a role they haven’t been offered.
Hiring Manager: What do you mean? We’ve invested so much time in them.
Recruiter: An investment would’ve been to have Jim in the first interview.
We’ve all heard this before by Benjamin Franklin, “Time is money.”
There used to be a longstanding hiring strategy that if you hired slowly you will increase your chances of making the best hiring decision possible. Well, in 2023, that’s no longer the case.
For the purpose of the hiring process, the time it takes to hire an employee can drastically impact the bottom line of a company.
It costs employers an average of $4,129 and takes an average of 42 days (roughly $100/per day) to fill an open position, according to a report by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).
In 1995, before email became widely available to the public, this would’ve been an acceptable period of time. Back then, you would’ve needed multiple interviews in-person to get to know someone well, especially at an executive level. Now, most of this can all be done through video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom or Google Meet.
The time part is clear. The longer you take, the more money it will cost. But where are those costs coming from and who is it affecting most? Let’s start with the company hiring.
Here’s an example of 3 employees that might be involved in the average hiring process and how much they earn per hour in Canada:
The average HR Manager in Canada makes $40-50/hr.
The average Hiring Manager in Canada makes around the same, at $45-50/hr.
The average CEO in Canada can make between $80-300/hr.
If these employees meet with a single candidate one time each for a duration of 1-3 hours, it could cost a company somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500-$1200 per candidate. This only factors in their time for the interviews and does include any prep time, travel time, debriefing, following up or tests that have to be ran. It also pulls them away from their actual jobs. Most companies want to see multiple candidates for a role, so when you do the math it starts to add up fast.
And then there is the forgotten candidate expenses. The ones who have to set time aside to prep for the interview, commute up to an hour or more in some cases, add wear and tear to their cars, spend money on gas, have access to child care, and potentially need money for food along the way. These are just a few things that go into a person’s day from getting ready to coming home from an interview. Now multiply that by 4-5 times and you get a broken hiring process and almost a week’s salary down the drain for those that don’t get the job.
So how do we fix this?
A well written job description, a proper phone screen, a follow-up zoom interview, and 1 in-person interview plus 1 more follow-up call/zoom is enough for almost 90% of jobs that don’t require certain manual machined tests. Companies need to take responsibility here. If you can’t get everyone into a room to meet with a candidate you are considering to hire, then you aren’t ready to hire. It’s that simple!
My perspective on this topic inspired Suzanne Lucas’ article, “If You Can’t Make a Hiring Decision Based on 1 In-Person Interview, You’re the Problem, Not the Candidates.”
It was an honour to be featured in Inc. Magazine! Read the full article here.
Shortlisted Tips & Trends
The Rise of Recruitment on Social Media:
According to Adaface’s research:
86% of job seekers use social media in their job search
Over 75% of people who recently changed jobs used LinkedIn to inform their career decision
91% of employers currently use social media as part of their hiring process
66% of Recruiters use social media for advertising job vacancies
Key Takeaways:
Social media has proven to yield a high success rate and become a staple in recruitment, with signs of continuing to increase for both job seekers and recruiters.
LinkedIn is an effective, professional, and high-quality platform for both job seekers and recruiters.
With this many eyes on social, it’s important for both companies and job seekers to build social platforms that reflect their brand, remain professional, and respect privacy/boundaries, if necessary.
You can’t make this stuff up
(*Disclaimer: these are real experiences provided by RME's community of job seekers and hiring managers)
"I’ve been through a lot of job interview processes that required multiple rounds of interviews and a lot of these were in person. I understand that’s the norm, but when it’s multiple rounds it becomes extremely time consuming and adds up pretty quickly monetarily speaking. One time I interviewed with a prestigious bank that spanned over the course of 2 months with an unforeseeable outcome. The process included 1 phone screening, 1 phone interview, 1 written design challenge (suggested work time: 3 hours for research, 3 hours for synthesizing and identifying problems, 3 hours to prepare visual/verbal presentation), 2 hour in-person design challenge presentation & workshop with team to solve suggested problems, 1 hour in-person behavioural interview, and 1 hour in-person portfolio review. After committing 15 hours of interviewing (not including the hours required to apply for, prep, and commute to the interviews) I was informed that their company had mandated a hiring freeze."
Have an interview experience or job application story to share?
To get featured, submit your story to our team below (character count limit 1000):
Overtime Reads
Looking for more content? We sourced these additional articles for you so that you don't have to work overtime.
Screened for you
*We do not receive any compensation for these promoted products/services, nor for any offers or discounts listed. Rather, we provide a platform for recruiters, hiring managers, and companies to present opportunities to job seekers.