How long should a recruitment process take?

Disconnect between how much time managers need to offer compared to how long candidates are prepared to wait

As we start a new year, our Chief Client Officer, Michael Illert has pulled together key metrics across some of the search and recruitment markets in which we operate. He specifically looked at, how long hiring managers need on average from receiving a candidate profile to making an offer and how this amount of time compares with the average amount of time it takes a candidate to withdraw from a process.

This chart shows the amount of time the average hiring manager took from receiving a candidate profile to offering a job. The second column for each country shows the number of days until the average candidates withdrew their interest.

For Australia, UK, Italy, Netherlands and Singapore you could say that the candidate and client are more or less aligned. Candidates were prepared to wait, on average, at least as long as the average client would need to get to offer stage in a hiring process.

In the US, Germany and the UAE however, candidates and hiring managers couldn’t be further apart. Businesses take nearly twice the time to make an employment offer as the average candidate is prepared to wait.

Let’s dive a bit further into this data. 

As you can see, in the US the biggest disconnect, across the corporate functions we cover, is within HR. The average hiring manager took 30 days to get to offer stage whilst the average candidate only waited for 13 days.

In Germany the picture is very similar, with the biggest gap in HR recruitment processes but, closely followed by legal. For legal roles the average client took 50 days whilst the average legal expert was only prepared to wait 32 days.

In the UAE, the disconnect is seen across all the functions we cover, with the average hiring manager taking 1.5 times the time the typical candidate is prepared to wait.

We can drill into this data in much more detail by location, industry sector, level of seniority and so on. At The SR Group, our experts, within our specialist brands Carter Murray, Brewer Morris, Frazer Jones and Taylor Root, have access to unparalleled data. We hold a significant amount of market trend, candidate sentiment and activity data and much more which can support your hiring process and recruitment decisions in multiple ways.

Reach out to us at any time if you want to discuss your recruitment and talent needs. My team and I are happily your first point of contact for the group.