Every hiring manager wants to move faster. Most of them are trying to solve it by sourcing harder, which is usually the wrong end of the problem.
When a hire takes three months, the sourcing rarely accounts for three months. The delay sits in the gaps — between the brief and the first search, between an interview and the feedback, between a decision and an offer going out. Those gaps are where candidates disappear.
Where the time actually goes
Map your last five hires honestly. For each one, note the date of the brief, the date the first candidate was contacted, the date of each interview, the date feedback was given, and the date the offer went out.
The pattern is almost always the same: short bursts of activity separated by long silences. The activity is not the problem.
Fix the brief first
The single biggest cause of a slow search is a brief that was never properly agreed. It looks like progress to start sourcing immediately, but if the hiring manager and the recruiter have different pictures of the role, the first shortlist is wasted and you have lost two weeks.
A brief that actually works specifies:
- What the person will do in the first six months, not a list of responsibilities
- Which requirements are genuine and which are preferences. Most job specs list twelve requirements where four are real
- What a good candidate looks like who does not have the obvious background, which is where most of the available talent sits
- The salary range, agreed and approved, before the search starts
- Who makes the final decision and who else must be consulted
That last one causes more delay than any other single factor. A search that ends with "I just need to run this past someone" adds a fortnight.
Compress the interview process
Most processes have more stages than they need. Each stage adds scheduling delay, and scheduling delay is where candidates take other offers.
Ask of each stage: what decision does this let us make that we could not make without it? If the answer is unclear, remove it.
Two changes that consistently help:
Combine stages into a single longer session. A two-hour block with three people in sequence takes one scheduling cycle instead of three. Candidates generally prefer it too.
Book the next stage before the current one happens. Hold provisional slots. If the candidate does not progress, release them. This removes an entire round of diary negotiation from every step.
Give feedback within 48 hours
This is the cheapest improvement available and the most commonly ignored.
A candidate who interviews on Monday and hears nothing by Friday assumes they were unsuccessful, and starts taking other conversations seriously. By the time your feedback arrives the following week, you are no longer the only option.
Agree a feedback deadline when you agree the brief. Treat it as a commitment, not an aspiration.
Have the salary conversation early
A process that reaches offer stage and then discovers a gap has wasted everyone's time — yours, the candidate's, and the recruiter's.
Establish the range before the search, confirm expectations at the first conversation, and flag early if a strong candidate sits above the range. That gives you time to decide whether to move, rather than scrambling at the end.
Decide what you will trade
Speed has costs. It is worth deciding in advance which ones you are willing to accept.
You can usually move faster by widening the specification — accepting adjacent experience, or someone who has done most of the role rather than all of it. You can move faster by reducing the number of people involved in the decision. You can move faster by paying more.
What you cannot do is keep every requirement, involve six stakeholders, hold the salary flat, and still expect to hire quickly. Something gives, and the decision is better made deliberately than discovered at week ten.
What good looks like
For most permanent roles, a reasonable target is a vetted shortlist within a week of the brief, first interviews within the following week, and a decision within two weeks of that. Four to five weeks from brief to accepted offer is achievable for roles that are not genuinely scarce.
Longer than that is usually process, not market.
The one thing to change first
If you only change one thing, make it feedback speed. It costs nothing, it requires no approval, and it is the single clearest signal to a candidate that your organisation is one worth joining.
Sizanid produces a vetted shortlist within 72 hours for most permanent roles — but the rest of the timeline is yours. If you want a frank look at where your process is losing time, [we are happy to have that conversation](/find-talent).
