- As a job seeker with a strong resume, you might think that getting hired for a job to which you’ve applied might be a speedy process.
- After all, this is a tight job market with employers in need of fresh workers, right?
- So why, you wonder, is it taking so long to get hired, especially if an employer takes a strong interest in you?
- This article offers 5 reasons why it takes what feels like a lifetime to nail down a job.
You’ve done it! You have produced the perfect resume, given a convincing interview, and feel overall that you’re a shoe-in for the job at hand.
The problem is the job at hand hasn’t yet materialized, and you’re wondering why.
Well, according to a recent article published on Fast Company the problem isn’t you or any other established job seeker, it’s the hiring process itself.
To that point, there are 5 main reasons why the recruiting process is so slow not just for you, but for anyone seeking employment. After all, you have a right to know why the average interview process now takes up to 23 days to get hired.
- Location, location, location
Cities tend to have industry clusters that play a part in how quickly hiring happens. Silicon Valley’s tech companies, for example, operate in a completely different way than Washington, D.C.’s government organizations, or Houston’s energy businesses. The higher the level of skill required to perform a job, the more intensive the interview process, and the longer it takes.
Here are some of the longest city specific hiring times:
Washington, D.C.: An average of 34.4 days
Portland: An average of 25.3 days
Seattle: An average of 25.0 days
San Jose: An average of 24.8 days
San Francisco: An average of 23.7 days
And here are some of the shortest city specific hiring times:
Miami: An average of 18.6 days
Phoenix: An average of 19.1 days
Orlando: An average of 19.3 days
Tampa: An average of 20.2 days
As the Fast Company article states the hospitality industry dominates in these “shortest time” cities, and offers more lower-skilled, routine jobs that tend to get filled more quickly.
- Screening
Most interviews follow a standard question and answer process, whether they start online or in person. However, job candidates have reported a significant increase in the way employers are using other screening methods.
Here’s what was recently found out by authorities in the hiring market:
- Background checks increased from 25% to 42%
- Skills tests rose from 16% to 23%
- Drug tests went from 13% to 23%
- Personality tests from 12% to 18%
Each additional test added a statistically significant amount to average time required for candidates to go through the hiring process, in some cases adding a full week, according to the report.
- Size Matters
Both independent studies and Glassdoor research find that hiring processes lengthen at larger companies, especially those that have expanded into multiple countries. In the U.S., companies with between 10-49 employees have the quickest interview-to-hire process at around 15 days. That number climbs as the company gets larger.
At companies with up to 249 employees, hiring takes on average just under 20 days
At companies with less than 1000 employees, hiring takes on average 22 days
At companies with 1,000 – 9,999 employees, hiring takes on average around 26 days
The report points to two factors influencing this process: Larger employers typically have narrower job descriptions and hire more specialized workers. Bureaucracy at larger organizations adds layers to the candidate review and approval process that slows down decisions.
- Titles Matter
Job titles also have an impact on how long it takes to fill a position. This shouldn’t be too surprising as the process to hire a new medical doctor would definitely be more labor intensive than hiring a waiter.
Jobs that take the longest for candidates to go through the hiring process include:
It takes on average 127.6 days to hire police officers
It takes on average 87.6 days to hire patent examiners
It takes on average 58.7 days to hire assistant professors
It takes on average 55.5 days to hire senior vice presidents
It takes on average 51.8 days to hire program analysts
Surprisingly, it takes longer to hire a dishwasher (6.9 days) than it does to hire servers or bartenders (5.7 days).
- Zero Impact
It is important to note that there are factors that have no influence on the length of time it takes to get through an interview process.
Individual job seeker characteristics such as gender, age, and highest level of education had zero statistical impact on how long it takes to fill a position.
According to Glassdoor, all of the recent lengthening of hiring processes appears to be driven entirely by economy-wide shifts in the composition of employers, job titles, hiring industries, and company HR policies.
Conclusion
The recruiting process in most companies may seem counterintuitive to today’s tight job market as well as the near desperate need for employers to hire fresh talent for existing job openings, but until recruiting as a whole is streamlined, the bottleneck of taking on new employees will continue to set employers back.
Will it change? Maybe it will.
Just remember that as a job seeker, the issue isn’t with you; it’s the hiring process. And until that is repaired, companies will short change themselves on strong job seekers such as you who will eventually find work elsewhere.
