In an employment market where growing businesses see competing with other companies for the same skills as their main barrier to hiring, reducing time to hire can make all the difference between securing a great candidate or settling for second best.

Hands down, that makes reducing your time-to-hire a win-win. Not only do you hire top talent and get them up to speed faster, but it can save your team time too. After all, who wants to be bogged down with tedious paperwork when you can spend quality time interviewing candidates?

So how can you quickly turn that new hire into a locked-down top-class employee or contractor on their way to delivering results?

If you’re not sure how to start, there’s good news—here’s how to reduce your time-to-hire in 5 actionable ways.

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1. Write job descriptions that attract the right candidates

First impressions count. And for many candidates, a job description is often their first interaction with your company. This means getting it right could be the difference between receiving an avalanche of unqualified resumes or hitting that perfect applicant sweet spot.

So if your job ads aren’t bringing in the right people, then perhaps it’s time to rethink your ideal candidate and think about both the specifics you need and why your role would be attractive to them.

That starts by stating upfront which skills and qualifications candidates need to be successful in your role. This alone will ensure you disqualify candidates who aren’t the right fit.

Then it’s time to share all the benefits you bring to the table—why a candidate should choose you. That might be by:

• Showing your culture
• Sharing how you care about employees
• Explaining how you’ll support growth and development

That way, even if you can’t offer the best pay or benefits, candidates who may appreciate certain tradeoffs for more meaningful work are more inclined to apply which can reduce time to hire and recruiting time.

2. Implement an employee referral system

Did you know that referral hires stay 70% longer than non-referrals? Companies see a higher retention rate with referral hires from happy employees compared to those who applied through other channels. Not to mention, referral schemes can save up to $7,500 in productivity and sourcing costs.

But it has to start through an optimized—and generous—employee referral program.

First, engage employees in recruiting efforts by letting everyone know about new job openings.

Second, incentivize employees to refer qualified candidates through either monetary rewards, gift cards, or extra PTO if their referral is hired and passes probation.

And lastly, be sure to acknowledge referrals—even if they’re not hired. If your employees know their efforts are recognized, then they remain motivated to continue reaching out to their network.

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3. Streamline your interview process to hire faster

The worst outcome for any hiring effort is to have your front-runner candidate take another job offer before you had enough information about them to make an offer yourself.

That makes the efficiency of your hiring process critical to landing the best candidates. To speed up your hiring process demands a crisp process for evaluating candidates, so that each interaction and interview enables your hiring team to make quick decisions as well as gives your candidates enough opportunity to learn about you.

Putting in place a questionnaire to screen potential candidates before the interview stage not only saves time by weeding out poor fits, but also provides more insight to candidates about what the job requires and gives them an easy out if they realize it’s not for them—saving you time and money in the long run.

While you’ll want to include some job-specific questions, ideally, your questionnaire will be short and easy to answer, such as:

• What skills or knowledge do you have that might be helpful for this role and why?
• What excites you about this role?
• Do you work better alone or on a team?

Then, build in a clear interview sequence that includes exactly who will be involved, what they’re required to evaluate, and what they need to pay attention to—from culture fit, competence, knowledge, to skills.

4. Templatize employment agreements

Hiring involves a lot of paperwork, which can take up a lot of time—especially if you’re creating new agreements for every new employee.

So what can save you time and let you move quickly on great candidates?

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Templating your HR documents.

From background-check permissions, to offer letters, NDAs, and job contracts, Dropbox Sign can help you create an easy-access library of HR document templates where your team only needs to fill in basic information, like names and salary.

And if you have a more sophisticated hiring cadence, Dropbox Sign can also vastly cut down on the manual work of inputting the same candidate information in multiple documents through automation. Just ask Flow Healthcare.

Flow Healthcare’s customer, Beam, needed a faster way to get their employees working across multiple healthcare facilities, without the headache of duplicating paperwork. Flow implemented automated templates using the Dropbox Sign API which eliminated the redundancy of filling out the same documents multiple times. Now, when medical facilities request an employee’s credentials and background check, the documents are automatically filled with the relevant information—reducing admin time by 50% and saving Beam an estimated $600 per employee by reducing time to hire.

5. Make signing offer letters easy with Dropbox Sign

Job seekers look for jobs online and apply via their mobile phones. The last thing they want is to be slowed down by outdated processes, like printing out forms, otherwise, they might apply for another job at a competitor if the candidate experience is better.

When applying for jobs, outdated processes are a big headache. The last thing job seekers want to do is download a PDF, find software to sign it, save that version, then upload the document to an email.

Considering completion rates for digital contracts across the board are 26% higher than paper-based contracts and they’re signed up to 80% faster, creating a streamlined hiring process has never been easier.

Meet job seekers where they are, on the go. Dropbox Sign is a mobile-friendly solution that doesn’t require printing or for the applicant to leave the process, creating an obstacle-free process for completing application forms—or signing job contracts.

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Sign on the cream of the crop

It’s a competitive job market for top talent, and the companies hiring them are changing their processes to nab them quickly before anyone else can. Creating a simple hiring process and reducing your hiring time is a surefire way to stay competitive.

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From updating job descriptions and using an internal referral system, to templatizing employment agreements, you’ll be well on your way to reducing time to hire and getting the best people onboarded in no time.

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