The Hiring Timeline: An Employer’s Guide

When you’re ready to fill open positions, the clock starts ticking on the hiring process. While every company is different, some general guidelines can help you lay out an efficient and effective hiring timeline. Staying on track helps you and creates a good relationship with potential candidates from the start.

Step 1: Identify the Need

Hiring needs can result from the creation of new positions, vacancies created by resignation, termination, or retirement, or internal reorganizations. Determine the open positions that need to be filled and then assess the urgency of the needs. Some jobs will be created for future projects, and some jobs require immediate action to reduce the workload of employees who may be temporarily picking up extra tasks.

Step 2: Job Descriptions

In the hiring marketplace, job descriptions can start to sound alike pretty quickly. Common phrases and clichés flood the job boards, making it difficult for your company’s job to stand out. Rather than recycling old job descriptions, take the time to write new ones that reflect the job as it stands. Tools like ChatGPT can be a helpful place to start, but read over for accuracy and company specifics.

Here are some ways to improve your job descriptions:

1. 1.Cut clichés. Phrases like “rockstar,” “team player,” or “self-starter” have almost lost meaning. They can also make it seem like you’re obscuring the real details of the job. Be specific and use the language that helps people understand what their role would be.
2. 2.Include salary. In this competitive job market, people need to know from the start whether the salary aligns with their career goals. In some states, it’s a legal requirement.
3. 3.Draw them in from the first sentence. Rather than “We need someone who will hit the ground running from day one,” be specific: “We are an industry leader in direct sales marketing by email.” Help someone know if they would be the right fit immediately.

Step 3: Advertising and Recruiting

Recruitment advertising starts with posting your newly revised job descriptions to popular job boards. If the budget allows for it, you may consider running ads on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube. Ads on professional organization websites can help you attract talent that’s specifically trained in the field.

To attract diverse candidates, consider posting on professional associations targeted towards diversity groups like the National Association of Asian American Professionals or the Association for Women in Science. Seek out those who represent your field in particular.

Put out calls to your network: recruiters, past employees you have a good relationship with, or current employees via a referral program.

Step 4: Screening

Once you receive applications or resumes, use your applicant tracking system to sort and filter candidates by their skills, education, and experience. Filter by priority to interview and note any applicants who may be desirable for a future position, even if they don’t quite match the current role. This step can help reduce the number of applicants selected for an interview, which can streamline the hiring timeline.

Step 5: Communication

Use your ATS to create a central communication hub so nothing gets lost in an inbox of someone on vacation. ApplicantStack can facilitate communication through emails or text messages, allowing you to customize the experience for the candidate. Be organized so potential employees aren’t stuck waiting for weeks to hear if they are under consideration.

In advance of putting out the job ad, craft your correspondence for all phases of the hiring process so that there is a consistent, warm, and engaging tone to each message sent.

Ideally, first responses would happen within a week, not including an automated message that acknowledges receipt of the initial application or resume. Schedule initial interviews for screened candidates within two weeks if possible.

Step 6: Interviews

Using the phone or virtual meetings for initial interviews saves time for both you and the candidate during the hiring timeline. These first-round interviews are an additional screening tool to dig a little further into the candidate’s resume details and determine if their experience and personality will be a good fit. They are typically shorter and may not involve as many people as later interviews.

Further interviews may still be virtual (particularly if the candidate is in another state) or in person, and seek more detail about a candidate’s character, vision for their future, skills, and job experience. The interview process can take two to three weeks, depending on the number of candidates. Inform those no longer under consideration in a timely fashion. If internal factors force a longer delay, be sure to keep the lines of communication open so the applicants know where they stand.

Step 7: Reference and Background Checks

If your company uses background checks, you should inform the candidates early in the process. You may even include it in the job description. This may be done concurrently with the interviews or once you’ve narrowed the pool. Reference checks help you know what it’s like to work with someone. They also reveal aspects of their character that may help you know who will be a good cultural fit.

Step 8: Offers

Once you’ve selected a candidate or candidates, extend the offer. The offer letter should include details about salary, benefits, remote or in-person work policies, start date, relocation options, and company-provided equipment. You may include what aspects of the offer are negotiable and provide information on how the person should communicate desired negotiables. Explain the process to accept an offer and how long they have to consider, and take this into account in your hiring timeline.

Step 9: Hiring and Onboarding

When someone accepts an offer, provide immediate access to the company handbook, policies, benefits information, required contracts or tax forms, and deadlines and information about how to submit them to HR. Studies show that effective onboarding is the greatest predictor of retention. Onboarding should include introductions, training, and an open-door HR policy for questions and concerns. Provide ample instruction about job benefits, duties, and responsibilities.

Timeline Expectations

According to a Glassdoor survey, it’s estimated that the average hiring process in the United States took 23.8 days. The job market underwent a seismic shift with the pandemic in 2020, and of course, each industry will have variables that lengthen or shorten that timeline. Government jobs, for example, often take at least double that because their timing is dictated by statues and laws.

Using that number as a guidepost, consider how hiring has gone for your company in the past. These metrics can be valuable to understand if there were delays at any point in the hiring process, enabling you to make staffing or process adjustments to keep things moving.

A tool like ApplicantStack provides reports about all aspects of the hiring timeline, giving you revealing data for improvement and to establish the benchmark that works best for your company. Variables like number of applicants and time of year can push the timeline, but you can still create a system that maximizes the time of your staff and keeps the process active and moving for the applicants.