Skip to main content
No items found.
logo dropboxsign
Why Dropbox Sign?
Expand or collapse accordion

What you can do

Sign documents online
Create electronic signatures
Choose or create templates
Fill and sign PDFs
Complete online contracts
Document management
Explore features
icon arrow right

Use cases

Sales and business development
Human resources
Startups
Financial technology
Real estate
On-demand services
Products
Expand or collapse accordion
icon dropbox
Sign
Make it easy to send and sign
icon dropbox
Sign API
Integrate eSign in your workflow
icon dropbox fax
Fax
Send faxes without a fax machine
icon dropbox integrations
Integrations
We meet you where you work
Resources
Expand or collapse accordion
Blog
Workflow expertise & product news
Customer stories
Real-world stories with real results
Help center
In-depth guidance for our products
Resource library
Reports, videos, and info sheets
Developers
Pricing
Expand or collapse accordion
Dropbox Sign pricing
Find the right plan for you
Dropbox Sign API pricing
Real-world stories with real results
Contact sales
Sign up
Contact Sales
Sign in
Expand or collapse accordion
Dropbox Sign
Dropbox Forms
Dropbox Fax
Free trial
Blog
/
Human resources advice

The Importance of Speed in Talent Acquisition

by 
Tina Eaton
November 1, 2018
4
minute read
The Importance of Speed in Talent Acquisition
icon tooltip

New look, same great product! HelloSign is now Dropbox Sign.

icon close

Speed is, as they say, everything.

‍

Considering the rate at which digital transformation is changing the enterprise landscape, there’s no denying speed should be a core element in any company’s talent acquisition strategy.

‍

Not only does speed put you at an advantage to win top talent over your competitors, it’s simply what today’s candidate is used to in the age of instant gratification.

‍

However, speedy talent acquisition is something many enterprises still struggle with.

‍

Based on nearly 84,000 interview reviews, Glassdoor found that the average time it took to hire was almost 24 days in 2017.

‍

Here’s what those three weeks of talent acquisition are costing you and what you can do to shorten your time to hire, increase worker productivity, and boost your bottom line.

‍

Slow vs. Fast Hiring and the Impact on Your Bottom Line

‍

HR expert Dr. John Sullivan estimates that on-the-job performance can decrease by an entire percent every single extra day you spend making a hiring decision.

‍

At Amazon, if their hiring department was to take 10 more days than usual to acquire human capital, on-the-job performance could drop by 10 percent. That 10 percent drop in average revenue per employee ($750,000) translates to a loss of $75,000 per new hire.

‍

While your average revenue per employee might not be the same as Amazon’s, the fact is that this number represents a monetary loss that can’t be regained and is almost never accounted for correctly when accounting time rolls around.   

‍

On the flip side, delivering fast and effective talent acquisition can have a major positive impact on revenue.

‍

Boston Consulting Group discovered that companies ranked as top recruiting providers had 3.5X the revenue growth and 2X the profit margin of companies that ranked at the bottom of recruiting delivery.

‍

To apply this in real life, say a midsized firm with average recruiting chops has $500M in revenue and $50M in profit. By becoming a leader in talent acquisition, they can take their growth from 5 to 17.5 percent annually—doubling profit to $100M!

‍

Chart showing how economic influence is most pronounced in six HR topics

‍

How to Increase the Speed of Your Talent Acquisition

‍

Empower your recruitment team so they’re ready to pull the trigger when a great candidate comes on the market by following Dr. Sullivan’s tips to clean up and speed up your talent acquisition workflow.

‍

‍

Two metrics on increasing speed of talent aquisition

Review and Compress Hiring Processes

‍

Part of the reason talent acquisition seems to take so long is that many key processes have multiple steps that require downtime in between.

‍

Take for example conducting interviews. Limit the number of interviews, conduct interviews digitally to eliminate scheduling difficulties and travel-related delays, schedule all interviews on the same day (or days) every single week, and avoid time-consuming consensus-based hiring to simplify the hiring process and acquire talent in a much more respectable time frame.

Work Ahead Where You Can

‍

Why not be proactive and get ahead when you know the next step for a candidate is approaching?

‍

If you know a candidate is being strongly considered for the position, go ahead and order the background check and call their references. This will reduce the downtime that’s caused by waiting for outside parties to inform your hiring decision.

‍

Have a department that hires regularly? Keep your pipeline full of pre-qualified candidates to cut down on the steps you’ll need to take when the inevitable opening pops up.

Clean Up Low-Value Talent Acquisition Steps

‍

Review every individual element of your talent acquisition workflow to identify and eliminate parts that take more time than they’re worth.

‍

To use the interview process as an example again, determine if you’re wasting time on perfunctory questions when you could be determining a candidate’s job acceptance criteria and asking other pass/fail questions during an introductory interview.

Apply More or Better Resources to High-Priority Talent Acquisition Tasks

‍

Once you prioritize the steps in your talent acquisition process based on their impact, it’ll be easy to determine where to allocate your best resources so they get done quicker and better.

‍

For starters, choose “expedited” roles and prioritize your recruiting resources there. Instead of trying to improve speed on every single job, focus on those where hiring will have the most positive impact.

Make it Easy For Candidates to Accept Offers

‍

The top 10 percent of candidates typically become unavailable in the span of just 10 days. Speed, again, is king.

‍

Dramatically reduce time spent making and accepting offers by understanding the candidate’s job acceptance criteria, making an enticing same-day offer, and reducing friction when it comes to the sharing and signing of the offer itself.

‍

A powerful way to reduce friction is to ditch the paperwork altogether and opt for a fully-digital, mobile-friendly workflow that fits seamlessly into your talent acquisition process with little to no coding necessary.  

‍

A survey by the talent acquisition publication ERE.net found that hiring speed is one of the most important recruiting issues for recruiters and hiring managers.

‍

We believe you’ll be able to drastically speed up hiring by using the tips here to compress processes, anticipate and execute next steps, focus on high-priority tasks, and integrate the right tools to automate and reduce friction in the offer stage.

‍

You don’t have to be an expert in speedy hiring to follow these steps to develop the right mindset, skillset, and toolbox to expedite hiring, get to productivity (and profit!) faster, and develop a culture of speed that all starts with new hires.

Stay in the loop

Done! Please check your inbox.

Thank you!
Thank you for subscribing!

Lorem ipsum

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

Lorem ipsum
icon arrow right
icon close

Up next:

illustration of a man with a ladder standing on a bunch of shapes slowly assembling them in a document
Human resources advice
4
minute read

Is it time to update your employment contracts?

A man is opening a handbook up and a bright shining light is showing on his face
Human resources advice
7
minute read

How to get started with an employee handbook

Analyst report

The business value of Dropbox Sign API

Products
Dropbox SignDropbox Sign APIDropbox FaxIntegrations
Why Dropbox Sign
Electronic signaturesSign documentsSign and Fill PDFsOnline contractsCreate electronic signaturesSignature editorSign word documents
Support
Help centerContact salesContact supportManage cookiesGetting started: Dropbox SignGetting started: Dropbox Sign API
Resources
BlogCustomer storiesResource centerLegality guideTrust center
Partners
Strategic PartnersPartners locator
Company
CareersTermsPrivacy
icon facebookicon youtube

Accepted payment methods

Mastercard logoVisa logoAmerican Express LogoDiscover logo
CPA Compliance BadgeHIPAA compliance badgeSky High Enterprise Ready badgeISO 9001 Certified badge

Dropbox Sign electronic signatures are legally binding in the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and in many countries around the world.
For more information, please view our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy