What is it with Recruiting functions wanting to measure how quickly they can blast through a recruitment process (or not)? How is this useful to anyone?

We all hear how important people are to the success of a company and that people are the #1 differentiator to competitors. Which must mean that getting the right people is mega important. Right?

If we’re agreed on that, then it is surely logical to assume that finding the “right” person will take time. After all, doing something well does take time;

TTH Analogy 1

Let say you needed an operation and were cheerily told by the surgeon that they were going to try and complete your procedure in half the time? Oh, and the reason for the rush was because the surgeon had received complaints from their bosses about how long the procedure has been taking. Would that fill you with confidence in your new hip?

TTH Analogy 2

If you ordered a meal in a restaurant. Took a sip of your drink. And out came your food 3 minutes later, would you be happy at the speed? Or, would you question that your food had been cooked properly?

My Experience with TTH

Personally, I’ve worked in companies with a TTH of 60+ days. I’ve also worked in a team that achieved less than 20. At the time I thought the 20 was incredible. But was it?

Recruiting well takes time. Candidates need to be found, engaged, then nurtured and properly communicated to. Good people can take time to find. The best take even longer! That doesn’t change just because someone has set a target to reduce Time to Hire by 50%…

So why is TTH the biggest, baddest measure in Recruitment?

Probably because it was once upon a time the only tangible thing that reactive internal recruiters could use to show they were trying to improve delivery:

“Sorry Mr/Mrs Hiring Manager, I know that you’re not overly happy with how long it takes to fill your vacancies, but look, we have actually reduced our Time to Hire by 20 days in the last year…so what more can I do?”

Trouble is if I’m the hiring manager I don’t give a monkeys. All I care about is that there is a desk in my team without somebody sat at it. Adding value towards my objectives.

I truly believe the best recruiting functions in the world will soon be the ones boasting some of the longest times to hire. In fact, they won’t even measure TTH because it will be a waste of their time! These functions will be focussed on one thing only:

Empty Chair Time

Empty Chair Time is the number of days that a position is vacant in a team. Either positive or negative.

Best-In-Class Recruitment

The best teams are able to measure empty chair time because they aren’t running reactive recruitment processes. Nor are they at the mercy of having to deliver hires with no heads up!

Connected to their businesses. They proactively seek and gain demand, months ahead of when it’s needed. They perform the same recruitment tasks as everyone else, but they will start them earlier. Spreading the work over a longer period.

They are able to present a wider, more diverse, more engaged candidate pool to their hiring community. They aren’t happy to make an offer to tick another requisition off the list.

Pie in the sky thinking? Not likely! This is how the best recruitment teams are working.

TTH strips out waste, doesn’t it?

There are those that say that a focus on TTH helps strip out waste from the recruiting process – good point! That’s a valid argument. Although, I would suggest that it’s far better to look at specific points in the process, rather than measure the end to end.

For example; measure how long candidates are sat without having had some form of communication, no matter where they are in the process. That would be far more valuable than having an overall time. Poor candidate experience still occurs every day. Even if your time to hire is dropping!

There’s only one thing for it

TTH – your time is up my friend, happy retirement!