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It’s no secret that it’s a job seeker’s market out there.  The national unemployment rate is dropping to levels so low that we haven’t seen them since 1969!  Employers are getting so desperate to fill open roles they’re relaxing their standards.  Some employers are no longer requiring formal higher education like a Bachelor’s degree, no longer requiring certain drug testing, and considering candidates with a criminal record.  In a tight labor market like this, tech employers need to be especially effective at recruiting talent for their notoriously hard-to-fill roles.  There’s one mistake that IT staffing agencies find employers often make that loses them talent.  Worse, it’s a mistake they unwittingly make, so they don’t even know to correct it!  This hiring mistake that’s so easy to make?  Moving too slowly in the hiring process.

Why is moving too slowly (and honestly, from most companies’ perspectives, it’s not that slow) such a mistake?  The problem is that Tech field moves fast and so do its job candidates.  Expectations have changed with the advent of LinkedIn, Indeed, and online job searching.  With the technical tools to expedite the hiring process, IT recruiters find that candidates have no patience for companies that move at a slow (or even sometimes an average pace) in their hiring process.  Other companies will accommodate this need for a speedy transition—so don’t be the one they leave behind.

Another reason technical recruiters find that a slow hiring process is such a mistake is because most IT professionals are pretty sought-after.  They’re likely entertaining several interview processes, IT recruiters, or even offers!  Moving slowly, requiring multiple interviews and phone screens, and/or requiring a lot of deliberation time means that candidates will probably just go with one of the other options they have on the table.  Particularly in the tech field, where there’s already a dearth of talent, this tight labor market has increased the amount of activity a candidate can pursue in their job search. To compete with everything else your ideal candidate probably has on the table, you’ll have to move fast.

The last reason it’s imperative to move quickly when hiring for IT jobs is because it helps the candidate to feel valued.  As discussed above, candidates are used to companies hiring quickly.  When a company asks them to come back in for interview after interview, or takes weeks to deliberate, candidates assume the company has a lot of hesitations about them.  Since it’s such a job seeker’s market, tech candidates have the option to go with companies that try to snap them up quickly and make them feel like a precious commodity.  Don’t move too slowly, or you’ll wind up losing out on your top choices– because they feel like your last choices!

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