Tag: Tech Industry

It’s almost becoming a joke — “do more with less.” It’s basically the mantra of the tech world right now, but it’s rare that anyone tells us what it actually means. We do know budgets are tighter. We know teams have been reduced. And we know that making the best possible hire is more important than ever.

So we spoke with the experts to go beyond “do more with less” and reveal real, practical ways that tech hiring teams can hit their goals in the midst of tech hiring challenges. Watch the full conversation below or keep reading for the key takeaways.

Introducing the experts:

• Ahryun Moon is Co-Founder & Head of Company Strategy at GoodTime. As the leader of a company that helps teams hire 50% faster by automating interview scheduling, she has deep insight into the importance of digital transformation in recruiting.
• Amanda Richardson is the CEO and Head of People at CoderPad. With a background in product management, Amanda’s focus at CoderPad is on enhancing the hiring process for technical roles.
• Jenny Jongejan is a Senior Recruiting Consultant. With 17 years of talent acquisition experience, Jenny has worked extensively with Bay Area startups, enabling efficient, standardized processes.

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Shifting priorities in tech recruitment

One of the most significant challenges facing tech recruiting teams is the need to adapt to constantly changing priorities. Just in the past couple of years, tech recruiters have dealt with explosive hiring, then the great reshuffle, then hiring freezes and team reductions. As the economic landscape fluctuates, teams must remain flexible, adapt to leaner budgets and smaller teams, and be prepared for still more changes in the future.

Our Technology Hiring Insights Report showed that on average, tech teams are hitting just around half of their hiring goals.

Ahryun Moon summarized the current tech hiring landscape: “With some layoffs and a downturn in the economy recently, the recruiting teams have received a big blow. Team size is getting much smaller than before, but quite a lot of recruiters are still being told to hit pretty lofty recruiting goals. A lot of recruiters are also becoming full cycle, without RC support, so they’re doing the entire process. That’s why a lot of teams are looking into automation and AI.”

Indeed, layoffs hit tech recruiting teams particularly hard this year. Our Hiring Insights Report found that 44% of companies had cuts that affected 15-19% of their headcount, and 22% reduced over 20% of their company’s total workforce.

Ahyun emphasizes that digital transformation has long been an aspirational talking point for companies, but in the “do more with less” era, it’s become a must-have, where recruiting teams are charged with bringing in crucial technology to fill in new gaps.

Standardization and automation: the dynamic duo to address tech hiring challenges

In the wake of tech’s hiring challenges, standardization and automation have emerged as essential priorities for tech recruiting teams.

Amanda Richardson defines these concepts for us: “Standardization is doing the same thing, having a standardized process. Automation is about making that process more efficient — whether that’s with scheduling or assessments — whatever tooling you can use to do the same repeated tasks more efficiently.”

Having clearly defined and standardized processes in place is crucial before you can effectively automate.

Jenny Jongejan, a seasoned talent acquisition expert, shares her four-step framework for an effective standardized recruitment process. She says when you’re standardizing, it’s important to first become crystal clear on:

1. Why you’re hiring: What objective is this role going to impact?
2. Who you’re hiring: What skills and experiences and behavioral attributes do you need?
3. How you’ll assess the candidate: For each stage in your interview process, how will you determine if the candidate is a fit?
4. Your evaluation criteria: How will you define what an okay answer looks like versus a great answer? 

“I know that sounds prescribed,” Jenny acknowledges, “but research does show that structured interviews are 81% more accurate in predicting job performance than unstructured ones.”

Learn more about behavioral interview techniques and interviewer training.

The role of AI and automation

There’s a reason why recruiting AI and automation are taking the spotlight. Ahryun stresses the importance of leveraging tech recruiting software to optimize the recruitment journey with limited resources: “There’s a lot of different places in the process that we can automate all the way from the top of the recruiting funnel to the middle and bottom. At the top of the funnel, there’s candidate nurturing. Tools like ChatGPT can help you with the content side of that. At the middle of the funnel, definitely interview scheduling. And at the bottom of the funnel, there’s background checks and onboarding.” 

Remember: AI won’t replace human recruiters. Rather, leveraging basic AI tools can help with personalization and initial communication with candidates, providing time-saving and efficient solutions for recruiters. Those wishing to cut their middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel efforts in half, without sacrificing the quality of their process, can find immense ROI in AI-based scheduling, assessment, and onboarding tools.  

Balancing candidate experience, personalization, and efficiency

In today’s leaner economic environment, tech recruiters often struggle to balance personalization and efficiency in their processes. While automation and standardization offer efficiency gains, personalization remains vital in creating a positive candidate experience. 

Jenny emphasizes the significance of personalizing outbound communication: “Knowing your candidate profile and personalizing the message in a way that is going to tug on somebody’s individual heartstrings […] is going to actually get more quality candidates into the top of the funnel.”

The role of candidate experience in a lean market

TA leaders agree with Jenny. In our own poll, 85% of respondents said candidate experience is still a priority in today’s market, with 59% saying it’s actually more important than ever before.

The experts on our webinar emphasized the importance of transparency throughout the hiring process, starting from the job posting itself. By providing detailed information about compensation, benefits, and the hiring timeline, candidates have a clearer understanding of what to expect, and it starts the process off on the right foot. 

Amanda also shares one of our favorite quick tips for improving candidate experience: “I would challenge every recruiter to apply to a job on their website and then apply to a job on their competitor’s website.”

She recommends as you go through both processes, ask yourself:

• Is this interesting?
• How does it feel?
• Is the experience smooth and easy to navigate?
• Does it feel like you’re being treated as one in a million or like one in a herd of cattle?

“Just spend the time going through and understand what your process is already and you will immediately find ways to improve your candidate experience,” she says.

A holistic approach to quality of hire

In lean times, hiring decisions become even more crucial. Ahryun emphasizes this point: “With the number of candidates in the market now, every single hire that you make actually becomes even more important.” Standardized processes, personalized engagement, and leveraging AI-driven tools all contribute to enhancing the quality of your hires, but all of these efforts need to work holistically and cohesively together.

Setting clear criteria for tech roles

Defining clear evaluation criteria is crucial to ensure that everyone involved in the hiring process is on the same page. 

Ahryun stresses the importance of an intake meeting and highlighted the value of having a shared understanding of the definition of a “top performer” from the very beginning of the hiring process. By collaboratively defining the standards for quality hires, recruiting teams can mitigate the temptation to compromise quality for quantity. Amanda adds, “Being transparent and clear along the way really goes a long way to align the recruiting team and the business team around what our objectives are.”

Jenny emphasizes the significance of standardized, fair questions in accurately evaluating candidates’ fitness for a role: “Implementing an assessment tool that is fair versus asking questions that may be more gotcha questions or have more subjective answers is going to help improve your process significantly.”

Minimizing mis-hires with smart standardization

Mis-hires can be costly and detrimental to a company’s growth. To avoid them, tech recruiting teams must focus on standardized processes and structured interviews.

Amanda doubles down on standardization as a way to prevent mis-hires, saying, “Having a standardized process is incredibly hard. It sounds easy, but really forcing people to ask candidates the same questions in the same order every time is really hard. But that, to me, will actually solve a lot of the mis-hires.”

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Predicting the future of tech hiring

Given the uncertainties of the economic landscape, it’s difficult to speculate on when hiring might regain its momentum. Still, Ahryun makes a data-informed guess on when we might see another hiring boom: 

“Hiring will pick back up when we think the economy will pick back up. Unemployment is still low, and inflation has been tamed. We are already actually seeing from our interview data an uptick from a lot of companies, so it seems like that positivity and optimistic feeling about the future is starting to come back.”

Better tech recruitment now and in the future

To successfully address tech hiring challenges now, and into the future, teams must prioritize clarity in their process and value in their tech stack — in that order. Here’s a roundup of the must-knows from our panel discussion:

• Standardization and automation work together to streamline processes and enhance hiring efficiency.
• Adaptability remains crucial amid changing priorities and economic fluctuations.
• Embrace digital transformation and harness AI to bridge resource gaps.
• Candidate experience still matters, and can actually be improved through standardization.
• Transparent communication (internally and externally) and holistic assessment foster quality hiring.

By integrating these takeaways, tech recruiting teams can chart a course toward success, adeptly managing challenges in an ever-evolving industry.

If you’re a TA professional, there’s a high chance that the economy is at the forefront of your mind — and it’s easy to see why. As the challenging economic climate forces companies to tighten their spending, talent teams everywhere have gotten leaner, and the pressure has mounted to operate more strategically and efficiently than ever before. 

With mounting concerns for the economy and increasing pressures to “do more with less” — as if you haven’t heard that phrase enough already — you’re probably putting a lot of thought into how you can drive success in recruiting during a recession (Is that what’s happening?), and what TA should even look like now. 

For starters, you can breathe a sigh of relief: experts say we’re not actually in a recession. But still, we’re in lean times that call for greater resourcefulness and efficiency. TA leaders must adjust their strategies to the current market if they want to meet their goals. 

Want to learn how to run a successful TA program even in a lean economic environment? Keep reading.

Unlock 2024’s top hiring strategies: Insights from 500+ TA leaders

Discover proven solutions to 2024’s biggest hiring challenges – straight from the highest-performing TA teams.

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An expert’s take on the role of recruiting in lean times

While a downturn certainly isn’t ideal for TA teams, Socotra’s Head of Talent Acquisition Dubi Ben-Shoham believes that it also presents opportunities for talent leaders to become more strategic, focused, and efficient. 

And if you ask us, we trust his advice. Dubi’s team hasn’t missed a hiring goal in four years. Meanwhile, the 500+ organizations surveyed in our Hiring Insights Report missed over half of their hiring goals on average last year.

Dig into the video below to hear Dubi’s full perspective on recruiting during tough economic times.

The state of the tech industry

What goes up must come down. After 2021’s rapid-fire hiring, soaring startup valuations, and wild rides on Wall Street, the tech industry’s growth is losing momentum. With evidence of declining sales and profit margins across the US, and worries that they might’ve hired too rapidly and expanded too much last year, tech companies are bracing for rough waters.

Companies have trimmed their budgets and their workforces to cope with the economic uncertainty. Each passing month brings more high-profile tech layoffs. In 2023, over 167,000 workers in the tech industry have been laid off. Twitter, Netflix, Snap, and Robinhood are among the organizations that have made cuts.

1 in 5 tech companies feels they are not prepared for a recession. There’s palpable stress and confusion in the air (“Is this a recession?” “What’s even going on?”). Yet talent teams should take comfort in knowing that the economy is constantly ebbing and flowing. The sooner that teams learn how to navigate the tides, the better off they’ll be.

Read more of what the experts had to say about addressing tech hiring challenges.

So you’re recruiting in a potential recession. Now what?

No matter if your company is hiring in full force or if you’ve slowed down your operations, now isn’t the time to sit around. Tech recruitment will inevitably rebound. And when it does, you’ll want to be in the best position possible to secure the top candidates.

The tech downturn offers a golden opportunity to optimize your hiring process to guarantee future success.

When recruiting during a recession or downturn, we recommend that you focus your efforts on these areas:

Optimize the hiring process

When recruiting during a downturn, talent teams need to go full throttle on optimizations. Now is the time to audit your current processes and identify opportunities for improved recruiting efficiency and other approaches you can take to optimize workflows.

“It becomes more strategic,” Dubi says. Look for ways to free up your team’s bandwidth and save valuable time and money. For instance, automation-based HR tools eliminate manual tasks so that teams can shift their focus to high-value projects that will create better business outcomes. 

“Being able to do the job is not a high enough bar. We need to say, ‘We cannot afford to not hire this person.'”

– Dubi Ben-Shoham, Head of Talent Acquisition at Socotra

Focus on in-house recruiting

In-house recruiting is an essential component of TA for companies of all sizes, and it’s even more critical when you need to function as a lean, mean, hiring machine. Keeping everything in-house helps you attract the best talent possible with skilled TA professionals who have intimate knowledge of your company’s needs, culture, and values.

And when budgets are tight, bad hiring decisions become even more costly. Hiring a new employee costs around 1.25 to 1.4 times the base salary; you need to make every new hire count.

“Being able to do the job is not a high enough bar,” Dubi said. “We need to say, ‘We cannot afford to not hire this person.’”

Dubi’s team does everything in-house. They combine the expertise of a hybrid recruiter/RC (who spends a lot of time leveraging GoodTime’s interview scheduling) and a sourcer. According to Dubi, relying on external recruiting firms wouldn’t yield the same high-caliber of candidates that they aim for. 

Get strategic with behavioral interview questions

Another way to make the best hiring decisions possible during this downturn is to equip your interviewers with the right resources. Here’s one crucial tool for their toolbox: behavioral interview questions that perfectly align with the attributes of your ideal candidates.

Dubi wanted to ensure his interviewers evaluated candidates with the right traits in mind, and he set out to achieve just that. To start, he had all of Socotra’s executives fill out a questionnaire about the traits they think their teams should have. Then, Dubi took those traits and turned them into behavioral interview questions.

Aligning your interview questions to your ideal candidate might seem like a minor task, but trust us — it comes with a big payoff. Not only do you stand a better chance at hiring the most qualified talent, but you’re also more likely to produce an efficient process by avoiding delays caused by misalignment.

“Connecting with a candidate on the first call is such a difference maker when it comes to the candidate experience in the process. Have a lot of fun with that call.”

– Dubi Ben-Shoham, Head of Talent Acquisition at Socotra

Remember: the candidate experience still matters

When there are fewer job openings and more job seekers, the job market tends to shift towards an employer’s market. Candidates might not have the upper hand as they did before, but make no mistake — the candidate experience still matters in the recruiting industry during a recession or downturn. 

The quality of your hiring process can make or break a candidate’s hiring experience (yes, the pressure is on). One of the most telling signs of a high-quality process is its ability to create strong relationships between candidates and your hiring team.

Candidates expect to be seen as more than just a number; they want to feel that their time and talents are valued. 

Keeping the candidate experience top of mind reflects positively on your employer brand and helps you stand out to in-demand talent who are interviewing at multiple companies. At Socotra, they deliver a memorable candidate experience by creating a personable, warm first impression.

“Don’t underestimate the importance of having senior recruiters do phone screens,” Dubi said. “Connecting with a candidate on the first call is such a difference maker when it comes to the candidate experience in the process. Have a lot of fun with that call.”

Dubi tries to research the candidate before he speaks with them so that he can bond over their background and interests. It’s all about making interviews feel less intimidating and formal, and more welcoming and human.

Where to improve your candidate experience

If all hiring teams had time to improve their candidate relationships, then everyone would do it. That’s the endless struggle for these teams: too many initiatives to implement, and not enough time. 

Luckily, today’s slower-paced tech hiring environment opens the door for teams to focus on this task (thanks, tech recession). 

Here are several ways to help your candidate relationships flourish: 

• Train all interviewers on proper interviewing etiquette. They’re your brand ambassadors!
• Collect candidate feedback. How else will you know if your relationships are translating?
• Be ready to get transparent; candidates don’t want to beat around the bush on salary expectations.

Use AI for an efficiency boost

AI in recruiting is the latest hot topic in the TA community, and for good reason. AI-powered tools come with substantial benefits, especially when “doing more with less” is imperative. AI automates your most tedious recruitment tasks so you can save time and money, reduce your time-to-hire, and maximize your resources.

Dubi is a fan of AI in recruitment when leveraging AI for communication. For instance, he likes to use AI for efficiently drafting repetitive candidate emails. He’s also asked ChatGPT to assist him in writing an elevator pitch for Socotra that would entice candidates to work for them.

But still, Dubi recognizes the immense value that human recruiters add to the hiring process, a value that AI can’t replicate. AI can speed up workflows and improve productivity, but recruiting is a human-oriented endeavor that requires a human touch. AI is most useful when it’s used as a recruiter’s assistant — not their replacement.

Read more about why AI won’t replace recruiters.

The data on hiring efficiency

Our Hiring Insights Report found that in the past year, improving overall hiring efficiency was the main focus area for tech companies (39%). Likewise, this is still their biggest priority for the next 12 months (41%). 

Greater efficiency reduces your time-to-hire. So, where did the tech industry’s focus on improving efficiency lead them? Here’s a hint: probably not where they’d like to be. Nearly half of talent teams said that their time-to-hire increased. Just 11% saw it decrease.

Where tech hiring must improve

Whether economic conditions have shifted your attention from hiring fast to hiring with precision, or if hiring at the speed of light is still your goal, hiring efficiency shouldn’t sit on the back burner. 

Speed to hire should always be a critical KPI for tech companies. Here’s how to optimize your hiring efficiency: 

• Automate, automate automate. Implement interview scheduling software to reduce the time spent coordinating interviews. (The right tool can help you save major time and money along the way.)
• Use email templates to standardize your communications with top talent.
• Make data your best friend; dig into your hiring analytics to identify efficiency gaps.

Making the case for HR tech during budget cuts

When recruiting budgets are being slashed, it may seem counter-intuitive to look for new software, but that’s not often the case. We spoke with Valeria Stanga, Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at HelloFresh, about why she believes it’s crucial to seek new tech-forward solutions during a downturn.

Hit a recruiting high note, even during a downturn, with advanced HR tech

If you’re barely keeping pace with your TA goals in this challenging economy, you’re not alone. Times might be tough, but that doesn’t mean you have to let your recruiting projects flounder and your productivity plummet. 

Adopting smart strategies, like thoughtfully curating your interview questions and using AI as a helping hand, is crucial to running a TA program that creates meaningful business outcomes. And just as important — if not more — is upgrading your recruitment tech stack.

When TA teams want to do more with less, they use GoodTime Hire. Hire helps you schedule interviews 78% faster, hire 50% more efficiently, and 5x team productivity. No simple scheduling tools here.

Discover how AI-powered interview scheduling software can supercharge your recruiting process.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

Hold onto your hats, tech recruiting teams: it’s about to be a bumpy ride. Layoffs ricocheted across the sector in 2022, and this year has proved to be no different. A total of 161,411 employees in tech were laid off last year, and a staggering 125,677 found their roles on the chopping block in 2023 thus far.

The impact of layoffs has left tech hiring teams in disarray, uncertain of what their next moves should be amid the rocky economy and hectic hiring landscape. But don’t stress just yet; we’re here to help identify the way forward.

After surveying 531 talent acquisition leaders across sectors for our 2023 Hiring Insights Report, we’ve released the report’s technology edition. Based on responses from 103 talent leaders in tech, the report highlights how they’re attracting and retaining talent amid today’s obstacles.

Our report’s data shows that while layoffs hit the tech sector hard, hiring teams have uncovered keys to success. If you want to rebuild your operations and stand the greatest chance at thriving once hiring rebounds, read on.

Unlock tech’s top hiring strategies in 2024

Our study of 100 tech TA leaders reveals how to hit your hiring goals in a challenging market.

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Layoffs Hit Tech Hard

If you’ve spent time skimming the latest headlines (or scrolling through your LinkedIn feed), you’re likely all too familiar with the tech sector’s mass layoffs. The rapid growth of many tech companies, followed by plummeting stock prices, led tech companies to reevaluate their expenses—often resulting in workforce reductions.

In total, 57% of companies from our survey reported layoffs in the past 12 months, with 44% saying the cuts affected 15-19% of their headcount and 22% reporting cuts of over 20% of their company’s total workforce.

Challenges Bear Down on Hiring Teams

The far-reaching impacts of these layoffs on both an individual level and an organizational level cannot be overstated. Yet teams have contended with far more tech hiring challenges than just workforce reductions.

The top challenge that dealt a blow to teams’ hiring efforts: mental health and wellness concerns (34%). This should come as no major surprise; the constant threat of layoffs and budget and resource cuts isn’t a recipe for health and prosperity. “Difficulty adapting to remote interview process” (30%) and “applicants whose skills do not match their resume” (28%) round out the top three responses. 

Tech might be known as a sector that quickly adapts to the latest trends, but evidently, not all tech recruiting teams have mastered the remote world. Embracing remote interviewing undoubtedly comes with growing pains, as recruiters learn how to uplift the candidate experience through a Zoom screen.

For tech companies that are still hiring in full force, having to sift through inflated resumes can be a major time-sink. The disconnect between real skills and resume content only further emphasizes the importance of rigorous screening.

Personalization and Efficiency for Hiring Success

Amid the rocky economy and difficult hiring landscape, talent teams at tech companies are on the road to recovery with personalization and efficiency by their side. 

Our data shows that increasing personalization throughout the hiring process is a key focus area for talent leaders in tech (46%). Personalization helps to make candidates feel valued as unique individuals, effectively meeting their high expectations of the hiring process.

Coming in second place, talent leaders also intend to improve their hiring efficiency (44%). Streamlining the hiring process by zeroing in on efficiency helps fill the gaps following hiring team layoffs and turnover while providing some much-needed relief to reduced teams. 

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

No matter if your team is still looking to fill open roles or if you’re in the midst of a hiring freeze, the fact is that efficiency drives present and future hiring success, including improved time-to-hire and increased offer acceptance rates. When you combine efficiency with personalization, you get an engaging, high-quality hiring process that can withstand anything the landscape throws its way.

Strategies for Winning Tech Candidates

Successfully hiring skilled tech talent in 2023 means catering to what candidates value the most. When asked what they convey to candidates to win them over, most talent leaders say that they communicate employee well-being (56%). Employee well-being was the top response for the second year in a row among our Hiring Insights Reports. 

To candidates, emphasizing employee well-being can be an indicator of a positive work environment. A company that prioritizes well-being is also likely to prioritize other values that are on candidates’ wishlists, such as a satisfying work-life balance and an attractive company culture.

Ranking in second place is flexibility (53%). However, there’s a major difference between conveying flexibility and actually practicing flexibility. One of the most impactful ways to put flexibility into action is by offering talent remote or hybrid work. Yet flexibility can take many forms. Tech companies could allow employees to work from anywhere within the office, take lunch when they’d like, or skip lunch to head home early.

Hey, Tech Recruiting Teams: Want More Insights?

2022 brought a rocky economy, sweeping reductions in force, and a difficult hiring landscape, creating a perfect storm for tech recruiting teams this year. The pressure is on to find and attract qualified candidates, deliver an efficient hiring process, and leverage hiring tools that drive teams toward success. Are you ready to conquer 2023? 

To dive deeper into these insights and much, much more, get the tech report today.

In the war for tech talent, no recruiting team wants to be left in the dust. Decreasing your time-to-hire is a reliable way to outpace the competition. Yet based on the data from our 2022 Hiring Insights Report: Technology Industry, few recruiters in tech have seen their time-to-hire decline.

If alarms aren’t going off in your head, they should be. A long, inefficient hiring process is a candidate-repellant (and recruiting tech talent is already hard enough). 

Recruiters in tech should take proactive steps to decrease their time-to-hire—and we’re here to help them do that.

Unlock tech’s top hiring strategies in 2024

Our study of 100 tech TA leaders reveals how to hit your hiring goals in a challenging market.

Get the report

What is Time-to-Hire?

First, let’s get back to the basics. Average time-to-hire refers to the time that passes from when a candidate submits their application to when the candidate accepts a job offer.

Note: this isn’t the same as time-to-fill, but they’re often confused with each other. The interval for time-to-fill begins before time-to-hire; it measures the time from when a job requisition is posted to when a candidate accepts an offer.

What’s a “good” time-to-hire for a tech company recruiter? It’s hard to say. Average time-to-hire ebbs and flows with economic and market conditions, the seasons, and requisition loads. 

Even company size matters. The average time-to-hire for smaller tech companies is 29 days, while larger tech companies see an average of 43 days. Smaller tech companies tend to have fewer hoops to jump through to bring on new hires, which decreases time-to-hire. 

The State of Tech Recruiting’s Time-to-Hire

How did tech companies stack up in 2021? We conducted our 2022 Hiring Insights Report: Technology Industry to find out. After surveying 409 talent leaders across the tech industry in the U.S., we saw that the industry’s time-to-hire isn’t a pretty picture.

The majority of talent teams in tech—58%—said that their time-to-hire increased. Only 9% saw it decrease. 

But not everything from our survey is doom and gloom. Talent leaders said that improving hiring efficiency is currently their biggest focus area for the future (41%). With the current condition of their time-to-hire, hiring efficiency needs all of the focus that it can get. 

Why Does This Matter?

There are innumerable benefits to keeping a firm pulse on your time-to-hire and taking active steps to decrease it. Here are a few reasons why time-to-hire matters:

• Slow processes kill a candidate’s interest. A short time-to-hire keeps candidates engaged.
• Hiring fast increases the chance that you’ll win the most qualified candidates before your competition.
• Time-to-hire illuminates the bottlenecks in your hiring process, and your holistic ability to compete in the market.
• Agile recruiting provides candidates with a smooth hiring experience and boosts your employer brand.
• Lengthy hiring processes that leave positions unfilled negatively impact company revenue.

The tech industry’s increasing time-to-hire is concerning. Even as hiring slowdowns and fears of a tech recession ricochet across the industry, time-to-hire is still a critical KPI. 

Regardless of hiring volume, hiring with speed is of utmost importance. If your company is hiring at its normal volume, you’ll face the challenge of finding and winning enough qualified candidates. If your company is hiring to a lesser degree, you’ll need to hire fewer but higher quality people. 

No matter what group you reside in, establishing an efficient hiring process to decrease your time-to-hire is the key to securing the best talent. 

How to Fix Tech’s Time-to-Hire Problem

From implementing automation to keeping candidates engaged, recruiters in tech must institute the right processes to get talent in the door faster while still delivering the high-quality hiring experience that candidates expect.

1. Let Your Hiring Data Be Your Guide

There’s always something to learn from your data, especially when identifying and resolving efficiency gaps. Use the data on your hiring process to diagnose what’s helping and hurting your time-to-hire. Then, you can make adjustments accordingly. 

For example, what does your response rate look like? Are candidates more receptive to correspondence via email or text? And what about your time between stages? Are you keeping your talented candidates waiting days and days before moving them on to the next interview?

2. Get Real With Your Hiring Manager

We’ve said it once, and we’ll say it again: the “perfect candidate” doesn’t exist. Your picky hiring manager with a laundry list of requirements, searching for their purple unicorn candidate, is in for a rude awakening once their role sits open for months. 

The importance of creating alignment between hiring managers and recruiters in tech early on cannot be overstated. Hold an intake meeting to discuss what a realistic ideal candidate looks like, and what touchpoints are necessary to hire this person. 

Here are several other topics to cover in your intake meetings:

• Ideal candidate profile
• Hiring process objectives
• Job requirements
• Title & salary
• Hiring process stages
• Sourcing strategies

When done correctly, the alignment from intake meetings ensures that the hiring process moves along at a steady pace and onboards the right person in a timely manner.

3. Say Goodbye to Manual Interview Scheduling

No matter the industry or company, all recruiting coordinators know the pain of sifting through calendars to find the perfect interview time. Manual scheduling invites hiring delays and bottlenecks—and nobody wants that. 

And what about when one of your interviewers cancels last minute? (Because yes, you know it’s going to happen.) Then suddenly you’re back to square one, up to your eyeballs in calendars, looking for an alternate interviewer with a free afternoon to speak to your candidate.

Automation is the solution to your interview scheduling headaches. By leveraging the right tech to automate your scheduling process, you’ll get a meeting on the books within seconds. Don’t believe us? Check out the difference that automation made for HubSpot’s talent team. 

Automated interview scheduling at warp speed

Lean team? Sky-high goals? No sweat. Secure top talent 50% faster with smart scheduling automation that handles even the trickiest interviews.

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4. Capture Your Candidate’s Attention

If you struggle to get talent to say “yes” to offers, or if candidates drop out left and right, then you have a candidate engagement problem—and this means bad news for your time-to-hire.

Every touchpoint in your hiring process should engage candidates and nurture your candidate relationships. If candidates don’t feel connected to your talent team, your company will quickly fade into the background amid competing opportunities (that’s right, your candidates are most certainly shopping around).

The secret sauce to cultivating impactful candidate relationships consists of four pillars:

• Genuine Connection: Candidates want to have meaningful conversations about your company’s mission, culture, and DEIB beliefs. They want to uncover if they align with what your company stands for. 
• Transparency: Candidates expect a transparent hiring process. Candidates want open communication from employers. Most recently, at the top of their wish list is pay transparency.
• Adaptability: Your hiring process must adapt to the calendars of your candidates. They want to schedule interviews at times that best fit their everyday lives.
• Candidate Well-being: Candidates want to understand how your company proactively supports employee mental health, and learn about any related benefits that are offered.  

Hey Recruiters in Tech: Want Future-Proof Solutions to Your Challenges?

Don’t let a skyrocketing time-to-hire bring your hiring process down. To keep your time-to-hire in check, get into the habit of identifying bottlenecks and optimizing your process for speed and efficiency.

And for more tips, check out what our experts had to say about how they’re solving today’s tech hiring challenges.

Have you been asked to “do more with less” recently? If you’re a talent acquisition professional in tech, it’s incredibly likely. 

Amid these tumultuous times in the tech industry and the greater economic landscape, a myriad of tech talent teams must maximize what they have. Whether this means grappling with cutbacks in budget or team resources, the pressure is on.

But with many tech companies continuing hiring in some capacity, TA teams must still deliver the high-caliber hiring experience that candidates expect…just now with less budget and/or resources.

This isn’t an impossible feat. Talent teams just need to reevaluate their current hiring operations and strategies. (And we’re here to help.)

Here are five ways talent acquisition teams can address tech’s hiring challenges and actually do more with less.

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1. Amp up Your Internal Mobility Strategy

When asked to optimize what they have, the opportunity that too many teams overlook is considering their current employees. That’s right; we’re talking about boosting your internal mobility strategy. 

There’s a multitude of reasons you should consider current employees for new roles. For one, companies that prioritize internal hiring have a 41% longer employee tenure than those that don’t. 

Not to mention that it’s faster and cheaper to hire from within. In times of “doing more with less,” this advantage grows even more important. 

If you’re wondering exactly how to enhance your internal mobility strategy, we’ve created a handy internal mobility guide to get you started. (Hint: it starts by getting leadership on the same page, emphasizing good ole L&D, and providing managers with the support that they need.)

2. Emphasize Continuous Candidate Engagement

Typically, a candidate’s journey ends when you reject them or extend an offer. Following this talent acquisition model requires you to start from scratch every time you must fill a role. That wastes a lot of bandwidth and resources—which many talent acquisition teams in tech can’t afford to lose.

Practicing continuous candidate engagement means engaging and re-engaging candidates before, during, and after the hiring process. This creates a high-quality pool of engaged, pre-vetted candidates to consider for opportunities. 

With a loyal community of talent to pull from, you’ll be able to conserve time and money that would’ve been spent on sourcing new talent.

3. Make Hiring Analytics Your Best Friend

Do you find yourself wasting resources running in circles, trying yet failing to understand why there’s bottlenecks scattered throughout your hiring process? If so, let your hiring data guide you towards clarity.

By analyzing your hiring metrics, you can pinpoint problems and identify the appropriate solutions—and avoid investing money into a solution that you’re not even sure will be the real fix. 

If you need help getting started, our Co-founder and Head of Product recently sat down with some of our partners to discuss how to masterfully evaluate your hiring metrics.

All in all, data is truly the gift that keeps on giving. Keep a firm pulse on your analytics dashboard, and you’ll have all the answers that you need already at your fingertips.

 4. Don’t Forget About Employee Referrals

When you need to maximize your budget and resources, gathering employee referrals just makes sense. Similar to the benefits of internal hiring, employee referrals can reduce time-to-hire and costs.

Out of employers surveyed, 82% rated employee referrals above all other sources for generating the best ROI. As an added bonus, 88% of employers said that referrals generated the highest quality new hires.  

Needless to say, if you don’t have a formal employee referral program, it’s time to spin one up. An employee referral program turns every single employee at your company into a mini recruiter. What better way to make the most of what you currently have?

5. Establish the Right HR Technology

A robust HR tech stack ensures that there’s no need to hire extra recruiters. With the right technology in place, your team of five will operate like a team of 50. 

HR technology not only allows you to maximize your resources during this current industry-wide hiring downturn, but also allows you to scale later when the industry inevitably revs up again.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

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Making the case for new HR tech during budget cuts

So you’re convinced that new tech can help you solve the “do more with less” problem, but how are you supposed to acquire new software while budgets are being slashed? We spoke with Valeria Stanga, a leading Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at HelloFresh, about how teams should approach seeking new technology, and how to craft a compelling argument that will win over your finance team.

For starters, operating without an ATS is a major no-no. The ATS that you implement depends on the needs and size of your talent team and company. Can’t decide which one is right for you? We recommend the following: Greenhouse, iCIMS, Jobvite, SmartRecruiters, Workday, and Lever. 

While an ATS is undoubtedly an essential, there’s some features that an ATS just can’t deliver. GoodTime Hire fills those gaps.

Hire offers a custom-branded, seamless, fully automated interviewing experience that’s driven by those that matter most: the candidates. It automates coordination, builds genuine connections with talent, and gathers actionable data to optimize the entire process.

Schedule a demo to learn more about how Hire can transform your talent acquisition process.

Automated interview scheduling at warp speed

Lean team? Sky-high goals? No sweat. Secure top talent 50% faster with smart scheduling automation that handles even the trickiest interviews.

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For many job seekers, tech is where they want to be. Tech industry jobs commonly promise good pay, a decent work-life balance, and attractive career progression. Yet despite this allure, the majority of hiring teams in tech haven’t been doing too hot.

In fact, the tech companies surveyed in our 2022 Hiring Insights Report hit just 46% of their hiring goals in 2021. 

Why has tech taken a tumble? Is the industry losing its sparkle? Or are hiring teams tripping up?

We dug deeper into our report’s data and found the answers.

Unlock tech’s top hiring strategies in 2024

Our study of 100 tech TA leaders reveals how to hit your hiring goals in a challenging market.

Get the report

Dropping the Ball on Candidate Relationships

Today’s candidates expect to feel a mutual bond with your hiring team and your company. If they don’t feel a connection, then they won’t join. Neglecting to prioritize your relationships with candidates means bad news for your hiring goal attainment. In this sense, it’s no wonder that hiring teams in tech missed the mark on their goals. 

To start on a positive note, 47% of tech companies agree that in the past 12 months, meaningfully connecting with candidates has become crucial. Likewise, 45% agree that this will remain a priority in the coming months.

But here’s the catch: only 34% of respondents looked to build better candidate relationships in the past 12 months, and just 35% plan on improving these relationships in the coming months.

When it comes to connecting with candidates, tech companies have great intentions but struggle with the execution. And yet, it’s not just tech companies that are struggling; this problem remained evident across all companies that we surveyed. The importance of candidate relationships is increasingly widely known. Now, it’s time to take action.

Lack of Focus on DEIB

It’s no secret that tech hasn’t always been the most welcoming industry for underrepresented groups. Female, Black, and Hispanic workers have historically made up just a small fraction of the tech workforce. But with the increased buzz surrounding DEIB in hiring over the last couple of years, one would think that tech would’ve made great strides…right? Our data isn’t hopeful.

When asked which aspects of their hiring process they looked to improve over the past 12 months, making DEIB a measurable priority was the lowest response (33%). The next 12 months don’t look promising: prioritizing DEIB was the second lowest response at 34%.

Yet at the same time, tech companies say that the diversity of candidates is the second most important metric to measure in the hiring process. Is it just us, or is something not adding up?

To make matters worse, when asked, “Which of the following do you communicate to candidates during the hiring process to attract top talent?” only 32% of tech companies said that they convey a commitment to DEIB.

Today’s Distance Economy opens the talent pool to a wide range of diverse candidates. Those candidates don’t just want to see an emphasis on DEIB in the hiring process—they expect it. And if tech companies don’t deliver? Candidates will run the opposite way, and hiring goal attainment will falter.

Hiring Efficiency Needs Improvements

In today’s competitive job market, efficiency is everything and hiring fast is essential. While a streamlined interview process is sure to wow candidates, a clunky experience can prompt them to turn down an otherwise desirable offer.

The more efficient your hiring process is, the shorter your time-to-hire will be. Unfortunately for tech companies, 58% said that their time-to-hire increased over the past 12 months. On top of that, 52% of tech respondents rated their talent acquisition process as just “somewhat efficient.”

Meanwhile, HR leadership at tech companies possess skewed perceptions on efficiency. Sixty-five percent of C-suite execs said their hiring process is very efficient, and just 33% of directors said the same. Directors have closer connections to daily recruitment operations than the C-suite, so it’s no wonder that their views reflect the reality of tech’s increasing time-to-hire.

None of this bodes well for tech companies’ hiring goals. The best candidates disappear from the market in just 10 days. If you don’t hire swiftly and efficiently, you can bid top talent good-bye.

Does interview scheduling automation make sense for my team?

ROI is key. This is not a time to invest in software that won’t bring you immediate value. So let’s eliminate the guesswork with our free ROI calculator.

Calculate Your ROI

Interested in Tech Hiring Tips from the Experts?

A short supply of recruiter-candidate relationships, sparse DEIB efforts, and inadequate levels of efficiency create a perfect storm for low hiring goal attainment. Needless to say, hiring teams in tech have some work to do if they want to stay ahead of the competition.

Read what high-performing tech TA leaders recommend doing today to address tech hiring challenges.