Written by: Mike Whittington
Two years ago, I had a new client call requesting help finding talent to fill a very specific position. This was a critical role for the company.
The hiring manager told me that the company had posted the position on LinkedIn several months ago. They received over 150 applicants, and it took human resources 3 weeks to go through each of these resumes to select 10 to pre-screen.
Due to the long process of reviewing resumes, 3 of the 10 selected were off the market.
The remaining 7 candidates were pre-screened, and 5 of those were set for in-person interviews with the hiring manager. From the time that the position was posted on LinkedIn to the first round of in-person interviews, it took just over 6 weeks.
The hiring manager selected 2 candidates to fly to their corporate headquarters and offered the position to their candidate of choice.
Four weeks into the position, the candidate left for another opportunity, and that is when the hiring manager reached out to me.
He had very specific criteria, which made it a challenging search. Their original job description and title didn’t match what is usual for the market. In addition, their compensation structure didn’t match the amount of experience and skill set that was required. We helped them modify the job description to attract top talent.
We were able to source 4 candidates that met the criteria. All 4 of the candidates had in-person interviews within 2 weeks of us starting the search. The top 2 were flown to corporate, and the candidate of choice was selected. We helped negotiate the offer and the candidate accepted.
The hiring manager said our candidate was a better fit than any of the previous 10 that were pre-screened during the initial search. They had wasted 10+ weeks on the search, that cost them time, money and more than likely hurt relationships with candidates in the market.
The candidate we placed is now in her 3rd year with the company and 2nd promotion.