OVERCOMINGHIRING

“I keep an eye on this by regularly applying for jobs to see trends in companies' processes," Lucas says. “One that I filled out a few weeks ago asked me to upload all these documents, and then when I got to the next screen, it prompted more supporting documents, saying I could upload up to 25! What would these 25 documents possibly be when you've got your resume and your cover letter? And what recruiter is going to look through 25 documents? Make your process streamlined and easy to apply to."

Silver Screening: Interview Process and Selection

Once a pool of applicants is available, the difficult job of choosing one begins. And it's a decision that's important to get right. While the average cost per hire is nearly $4,700, according to new benchmarking data from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), Edie Goldberg, founder of E.L. Goldberg & Associates and chairelect of the SHRM Foundation, says that factoring in “soft costs" like time invested by leadership throughout the hiring process pushes the real price up to three to four times the position's salary.

“Of those costs, I would say 30%-40% are hard costs, and the other 60% are soft costs," Goldberg said.

“Think about the consequences of a wrong decision," Kinney says. “You have a candidate that's not a good job fit who stays through the process and potentially gets a job. Then you have someone who's either going to be a low performer or a bad fit within the culture, and then you've got turnover and replacement costs. You end up paying the price."

For smaller agencies, the stakes are that much higher. “The criticality of that employment decision is higher, with an individual's impact being much more salient in a smaller organization," Kinney says. “But luckily, smaller agencies can also take advantage of the smaller candidate pool by putting the smaller group of candidates through a more rigorous selection process."

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Hiring becomes a balancing act between being thorough to ensure the agency and the job seeker have the information to make the bidirectional employment decision and making the process so lengthy that the candidate disengages.

“You can only keep engagement for so long, and companies are slowly learning that six rounds of interviews aren't cutting it anymore," Lucas says. “Your competitors are hiring after one or two and your candidates aren't going to put up with a long process anymore."

The most important action an agency can take during the hiring and screening process is “keeping applicants up to date," Lucas adds. “I've had recruiters say, 'But there aren't any updates, so I don't tell them anything because there's nothing to say.' Telling a candidate there's nothing to tell them is an update so they don't feel like they're being ghosted."