When you advertise a vacancy in your team, a slick hiring process should be your top priority. Not many realise that hiring speed often influence hiring results.

Think about it. Would you hire someone who takes a long time to respond to your email? No, you wouldn't. The same goes with candidates.

With it being a candidate-driven market, the best job seekers are in high demand as there are plenty of job openings and a shortage of qualified applicants to fill those openings. In order to attract and retain top candidates, you'll need to speed up your hiring process.

Read on why slow hiring in a competitive market can potentially hurt your business.

Loss of top candidates

While you're still halfway through your hiring process and deciding on which top applicant to contact, your candidates might already be receiving other offers. Top talent would be looking at the offers they have and contemplating their choices before you've completed your interview process, and you'll miss out on great applicants. Unless you're a huge name brand that's worth waiting for, your best candidates will most likely accept the next good opportunity coming their way. With the request for top talent higher than ever especially in in-demand industries, a lengthy hiring process is a serious liability as you'll be losing top candidates to your competitors who have a quicker hiring process.

Quality of hires

You might think that a longer hiring process improves the quality of hire as you'll be able to do your due diligence and consider the top contenders for your open positions. However, slow hiring actually has the opposite effect - the lengthier your process is, the more impact it might have on the quality of your hire. When there's an extended hiring process, top candidates will likely leave as they've accepted other jobs and you'll be left with a weaker talent pool to choose from. Over an extended period of time, slow hiring may cause you to only hire average workers as your best candidates will have plenty of time to rethink their position to work for you and might quit even before the interview process begins.

Loss of revenue and productivity

Some companies mistakenly assume that having open positions saves them money but that's far from the truth as vacant positions significantly impact productivity, innovation and revenue generation. Slow hiring negatively affects your current workforce as employees will have to pick up the slack, which increases stress levels and mistakes and causes lower quality output and poor customer service. Long-vacant positions might even result in possible employee turnover particularly when they are overloaded with work. Additionally, when your employees lose confidence that they'll be able to return to their normal work responsibilities - employee morale will drop, and low morale isn't easy to overcome.

Damage to your employer brand

A lengthy hiring process is usually seen by candidates as a red flag and often results in poor candidate experience with applicants dropping out, pursuing other opportunities, refusing the role, and never reapplying. Candidates that are dragged through a tedious hiring process will certainly share their experiences via word of mouth and social media. Frustrated candidates posting negative reviews on Glassdoor and on job boards detailing their experiences can damage your company's brand image as it'll dissuade top talent to send in their applications. Your hiring process reflects how your company operates, and if your company gains the reputation of being slow, you'll not only lose future prospects and consumers, but it may adversely impact your ranking on "best places to work" lists.

With talent being scarce, it is important that you optimise your hiring process and focus on candidate experience and their journey. By doing that, you entice the best candidates and not lose out on securing game-changing employees. By improving your interview process, you can strike a balance between high-quality candidates and hiring speed. Through a streamlined approach, you'll be able to set your company apart as an attractive employer and engage and retain top talent to work for you.