​The average time it takes to hire a candidate is increasing.

According to a recent post from LinkedIn, it can take more than forty days for a hiring manager to find and make an offer to the right employee. While part of this problem may be attributed to skill shortages in the accounting space, there’s a larger underlying issue.

Companies are taking too long to make decisions.

While it’s important to be cautious when choosing the right employee to bring onto your team, a slow hiring process can have a number of negative repercussions. As competition for talent in the accounting space grows, taking too long to select a candidate could/will mean you miss out.

At the same time, there’s a risk you could end up impacting your employer brand, prompting future candidates to avoid applying for your roles.

Remember candidates talk to each other and especially online.

So let’s talk about why hiring faster is a good idea.

Hiring Fast vs Hiring Slow: Why Speed Wins

The best candidates in the Accounting space are in high demand. The most talented accountants are receiving multiple offers from a variety of different companies and firms. If you’re not fast to act, the chances of losing your ideal employee are higher than ever.

As a recruiter, we can only do so much to persuade candidates to wait.

Recruiting faster doesn’t mean abandoning your standards when choosing the correct candidate. Instead, it means reworking your process so you can make intelligent decisions quickly.

Here are some of the reasons why companies need to increase the speed of their hiring strategy if they want to remain competitive.

1. Increases Your Chances of Securing the Right Talent

The hiring marketplace has changed drastically in the last three years. Today’s Accounting employees don’t have time to wait around for an employer to offer them a role. More importantly, they usually don’t have to. Even if you don’t offer a role to a candidate straight away, there’s a good chance another business will.

Making slow decisions about who to bring onto your team doesn’t necessarily improve your chances of getting a high-quality candidate. While you’re consulting with your C-Suite and business leaders about whom to hire, your candidate is already looking for alternative roles.

The longer you take to decide, the more chance you have of someone else swooping in and taking your top choice. This could mean you need to settle for a less-than-ideal alternative, just so you can fill the gap in your team.

2. Better Existing Employee Experiences

A slow hiring process isn’t just a problem for future employees, it can cause issues with your current accounting workforce too. When positions go unfilled for too long in a business, many leaders need to distribute the tasks associated with those roles to other team members, to fill the gaps.

This means staff end up focusing more of their time on projects and initiatives not included within their general job description. This can increase your risk of burnout and overwhelm, and even encourage employees to start searching for new roles too.

Placing more strain on your existing team also means they’re more likely to be prone to making mistakes in their day-to-day work. Overwhelmed staff need to rush through tasks, rather than giving each job their direct focus.

3. Enhanced Candidate Experiences

Candidates in the skills-short Accounting landscape aren’t just searching for great salary options and benefits. They’re also looking for evidence their employer will treat them with empathy and respect. This means the candidate experience has become more important than ever to companies in search of new talent. Fail to deliver a good experience, and you’ll miss out on future opportunities.

A speedy hiring process delivers a better all-around experience for your candidates, showing them, you respect their needs.

The faster you provide your candidates with an offer, the more likely they are to feel committed to your brand and their role within your company. The longer your hiring process takes, the more your new team members are likely to lose their enthusiasm about their new role.

4. Improved Employer Brand and EVP

Ensuring you can attract and retain the best quality of Accounting talent in today’s world requires significant effort. You need to ensure you’re promoting an employer brand that convinces your candidates you have the right opportunities to offer.

Your employer brand is influenced by everything you do when interacting with both your existing employees and future staff. This means if your candidate experience is poor, due to a long recruitment time and lack of communication, you could risk scaring off new employees. In fact, around 43% of job-seekers say they might even write a negative review about an employer when the hiring process takes too long.

Committing to quickly providing your candidates with insights into the success of their interview, and making decisions fast about who to hire will ensure you stand out in the Accounting space.

Speed Up Your Hiring Process

The best candidates in the Accounting landscape won’t wait around for a long hiring process. They have endless options available when it comes to choosing who to work with. If you can’t act quickly to secure the best candidate, you’ll miss out.

Recruiting faster doesn’t have to mean lowering your standards, but it could mean looking for ways to optimise the hiring process. Working with an Accounting recruitment agency could help you to sort through candidates faster, so you can get the right talent quickly.

The Hedley Scott team ensure we provide a consultative approach when working with each of our clients. We don’t just place candidates in companies, our aim is to consistently add value throughout the recruitment process in every way possible. To deliver the most successful outcome, our approach is to clearly understand our client’s unique requirements, provide open and honest feedback whilst utilising our industry knowledge and recruitment expertise. Contact one of our team here.

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