Recruiting is Broken, But Why Should You Fix It?
Everyone hates your hiring process and it's costing you dearly. The fix is easier than you think.
Despite all the excitement about AI and how it will transform work, for now companies still need actual people to do the work. When those people leave or business needs change, they need to recruit new ones. But in most companies, that process is fundamentally broken. And in many cases, you don’t need AI to fix it.
Everybody hates recruiting
There are three key players in the recruiting game: Managers who need to fill an open role, candidates who are interested in that role, and the HR professionals that post the job, interview candidates, make offers, and onboard. And all of them hate it.
For managers, the biggest issue is how long the process takes. For a typical white collar job, it takes 6 to 8 weeks from job posting to offer acceptance and another 4 to 6 weeks to complete the onboarding process. Justifying the need for the role and getting approval often adds a few weeks. Even in the best case scenario, it will take three months before the replacement is on board. In the meantime, the rest of the team will have to take on that extra work. The longer it takes to find a replacement, the bigger the risk that the best performers on the team decide that they had enough and hand in their notice too, making the problem even worse. One out of three employees cite an excessive workload as the reason for leaving.
Candidates also do not like how long the process takes, but they are even more annoyed by the lack of communication and transparency. In a recent survey, 40% of respondents report being ghosted after several interview rounds. And those lucky enough to get hired often realize that the actual job is very different from what they were told during the interview process, which is why so many leave within the first few months.
Recruiters struggle to keep up with a flood of applicants. In small companies a single person does it all, but in large companies it often involves scores of recruiters, sourcing experts, coordinators, HR business partners, and operations specialists. The more people involved, the harder it is to coordinate their work, requiring endless email threads to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. A patchwork of systems requires entering information multiple times, which creates opportunities for errors. And then there is the rework: Requisitions are put on hold or canceled altogether. Candidates with accepted offers are no-shows on day one. New hires quit after just a few weeks on the job. Not surprising, several studies show that compared to other functions, HR professionals report the highest level of burnout and lowest levels of job satisfaction.
Why is nobody fixing it?
So if everybody involved in the recruiting process hates the experience, why does nobody bother to fix it?
The first reason is that senior leaders often do not even know there is a problem. Typical HR dashboards show metrics like cost per hire or number of open positions, but they rarely show how long the position was open or how the average candidate experiences the process. The recruiting experience for senior leaders is the equivalent of always flying first class, when everybody else flies basic economy. So it is not surprising that most executives have no idea how bad the process actually is.
The second reason is that even if they are aware, most senior leaders do not care, because the costs do not show up on their P&L. At least in the short run, a broken recruiting process can even appear to be saving money, because every day the position is open, you are spending less than you budgeted. Of course, in the long run not filling these roles sooner will eventually impact your top and bottom line, but by that time the damage is done - and is rarely traced back to the broken recruiting process.
So it is not surprising that senior leaders rarely pay attention to the recruiting process, even if it is badly broken: they don’t know and they don’t care. But you can change that.
Show me the money!
But for many companies, fixing the recruiting process presents an enormous opportunity. Let’s use a simple example to think through the business case.
Say you are the CHRO of a company with 3,000 employees, $400 million in revenues, and 10% EBITDA ($40 million). The business is growing in the low single digits but your budget assumes that you can handle the growing workload at the current staffing levels. Turnover is 20%, so every year you need to replace 600 employees. You have a TA team of 12 and your annual budget for recruiting is $3M, translating into an average cost per hire of $5,000. It takes you on average of four months to fill an open position - something everybody complains about.
A consulting firm is pitching you a project to cut time to fill by 50%. They are asking for $250K.
How do you justify the investment?
Several surveys show that 1 out of 3 employees quit because the workload is not sustainable. it seems reasonable to assume that if you could cut the time to fill the position by half (from four months to two), the number of employees that quit for that reason could be cut in half as well. That means you now need to hire one hundred less people, which could reduce your recruiting cost by $500,000 (assuming you cut your recruiting staff and budget accordingly).
A 2:1 ROI is not bad, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What about the cost of training? SHRM estimates the cost of training and lost productivity at 30% of a new hires’s annual salary. Assuming an average salary of $100,000, that translates into $30,000 for each new hire, so not having to hire 100 people would save another $3M.
Granted, none of these savings are hard savings, so getting the CFO on your side might be challenging. But just because you cannot easily put your finger on a line item in the P&L does not mean the cost - and the opportunity - is not real.
How do you fix it?
Let’s assume you looked at your recruiting process, realized that it’s badly broken, and made a compelling case to your superiors that something needs to be done about it. But how do you actually go about fixing recruiting? Based on our work with clients, here are four suggestions you might want to consider:
Measure what matters: Make sure you have relevant, reliable, and actionable metrics. But Most HR dashboards show what is easy to measure, and as a result HR leadership often flies blind. Use surveys to get data on the hiring manager and candidate experience. Without a good baseline, it will be difficult to zero in on the key problems and to see whether the changes you are making are moving the needle.
Streamline the process: Map the whole process from start to finish. Reduce handoffs by combining roles. Eliminate redundant steps and leverage automation. Establish a single point of contact for candidates and managers.
Improve the candidate experience: Don’t require candidates to fill in the same information over and over. Avoid collecting data nobody does anything with. Give them updates on where they are in the process and what comes next. Once they accept your offer, make it easy for them to complete the onboarding task.
Develop better specs: Most job descriptions are a long laundry list of general requirements, which makes it difficult for HR to find the right candidates. In computing, this is known as “Garbage In, Garbage Out”: poor quality, incorrect, or irrelevant inputs will always produce flawed, unreliable, or useless output. The same idea also applies to talent acquisition - and it is in HR’s best interest to help leaders develop clear, focused specifications for what they really need.
The good news is, none of these suggestions require sinking tons of money into new technology.
What are you waiting for?
Recruiting is not an HR transaction—it’s a strategic business function. Treat it like one, and you’ll not only fill jobs faster, but also attract the kind of talent that drives long-term success. A well designed recruiting process sends a clear signal to candidates that you value their time, ensures managers get the support they need, and enables recruiters to do their best work - and it can even make a significant contribution to the bottom line. So what are you waiting for?
We have helped many companies dramatically improve the recruiting process over the course of just a few months. It is easier than you think - and a great way to engage your team. If you would like help fixing your recruiting process, please reach out to set up a free exploratory call.