Employers are losing their strongest hires to a process that moves far too slowly, and most of them haven’t fixed it, a Toronto-based recruiter says.
Julie Labrie, president of BlueSky Personnel Solutions, said the average time to hire now sits at 68.5 days, while the best candidates are only on the market for about 10 days. She said 48 per cent of candidates are fielding three or more offers during a job search, and 69 per cent are less likely to apply at all if they hear the process drags.
“Candidates are not waiting for you,” Labrie said. “They’re moving on.”
One client took three weeks to make an offer to its top choice, only to find the candidate had accepted elsewhere, she said. The second-choice candidate was gone too, and the search had to start over.
The 24-hour rule
Speaking during a session on negotiating job offers at SHRM26 in Orlando on June 17, Labrie urged HR leaders to adopt what she called the 24-hour rule and to hold hiring managers to it before a job ever goes live.
“If you’re not available to interview tomorrow, do not post your jobs today,” she said.
That means getting managers to sign off on the requisition and block interview time in their calendars up front, she said, rather than posting a role and discovering the decision-makers are on vacation.
Delays after the interview are just as costly, she said. According to Labrie, 40 per cent of job seekers keep looking if they get no feedback within two weeks, and 50 per cent lose interest entirely after two to four weeks of silence.
She also told the audience to stop running every hire through the same gauntlet. She recommended matching the process to the level of the role: 20 minutes to an hour for entry-level, one to two hours for mid-level, two to three hours for senior roles and four to five hours for executives.
“There’s no need to put your entry-level people through five interviews, and I don’t want to hear, ‘But that’s our process here at our company,'” she said. If several people must meet the candidate, she said, put them in the same room at the same time.
Labrie described a payroll candidate who walked away after four interviews when the client asked for a fifth so one manager who had missed the earlier rounds could sit in. The client would have offered her the job, she said.
Stop talking, start asking
The biggest mistake Labrie sees is employers overselling the job instead of drawing out what the candidate actually wants.
“The candidates are sitting in front of you because they’re already half sold,” she said. “You’re giving them a TED talk on the company and on the benefits and everything that you have to offer.”
Instead, she said, ask a strategic question and let the silence do the work. “You need to stop talking. You need to let them talk, and that’s when you get the important information out of them.”
She said interviewers stop at the surface and take the first answer. When a candidate says they want growth, she said, ask them to define it — it might mean more responsibility, a bigger team, a different job or simply a title. She recalled a candidate who nearly walked from a role called merchandising specialist because he wanted a manager title, not more duties. The client changed the title to category manager and made the hire.
The same applies to vague dealbreakers, she said, recalling an employer that kept losing salespeople to travel. “You have to find out the definition, because it’s different for everyone,” Labrie said.
Her go-to question: “If you would have been made a manager in your last position, what would you have changed?”
“I can guarantee you, they’ll tell you everything you need to know that they didn’t like about their job,” she said.
Close to the no on money
Labrie said recruiters and HR leaders need to test where a candidate’s number actually lands rather than accepting a range — walking a candidate up from $45,000 to $50,000 until they say yes, and then asking what conditions sit behind that yes.
Just as important, she said, is reconfirming compensation at every touch point, by phone, email and in person.
“It’s going to change,” she said. Candidates learn more about the hours, the workload and the job description as they move through interviews, and their expectations shift, she said. One customer service manager candidate told her after the first interview that the job was far bigger than the posting suggested and he would need another $10,000. She called the client, who agreed, before moving him forward.
If the number can’t be met, she said, say so early and let the candidate decide whether to continue.
She said other details matter just as much. A social worker candidate declined an offer because six weeks of paid sick leave she had flagged at the outset was left out of the written offer, even after the client had verbally agreed. Verbal assurances are worthless once the manager leaves, Labrie said — it has to be in the offer.
Flexibility is the currency
With salary increase budgets averaging 3.4 per cent and mostly reserved for hard-to-fill roles, Labrie said employers have to look beyond cash.
She cited figures showing 85 per cent of workers now consider remote options more important than salary, six in 10 are extremely likely to look elsewhere if they can’t work remotely, and 69 per cent would take a lower salary for more flexibility. She said 91 per cent would spend more time in the office if they had quiet spaces, comfortable furniture and upgraded equipment.
She pointed to a client of nearly 20 years that once ran 8:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. days, only hired within a 40-minute commute and made employees wait a year to take vacation. Turnover was a revolving door, she said. The company shortened its hours, loosened its vacation policy and, after the pandemic, went fully remote with two office days a month. Retention climbed and hiring stopped being a problem, she said.
“If the talent is not willing to go to you, you have to change, because the talent will tell you,” Labrie said. “Sometimes, if you’re not able to attract the talent to your organization, maybe you’re the one that needs to change.”
Trust, transparency and power
Labrie said 54 per cent of job seekers don’t trust companies to be honest during hiring, and 78 per cent believe the candidate experience reflects how a company treats its employees.
She recommended letting finalists meet the team before an offer. One client refused when a receptionist candidate asked, telling Labrie she wouldn’t be a fit. “What did they have to hide for her not to meet with the rest of the team?” she said.
She also criticized employers who treat negotiation as a red flag. A sales candidate who asked to discuss his offer was dropped for being “too needy,” she said.
“It’s a sales position. Don’t you expect your salespeople to want to negotiate?” Labrie said. “That’s the only opportunity the candidates will have to negotiate the terms of employment.”
She said 40 per cent of candidates are declining offers because of a bad interview experience, and employers should stop assuming they hold the cards.
“Whether it’s an employee’s market, an employer’s market, job seekers are always going to be in charge because they’re the one deciding whether they’re signing your offer in the end,” she said.
Hiring for skills, not résumés
Labrie said the pool of experienced talent is too small to keep hiring on experience alone, yet only 20 per cent of companies are doing skills-based hiring.
“Experience is a flawed predictor of how someone is going to perform in their job,” she said.
She pointed to one employer using the assessment tool Test Gorilla to pre-screen 10,000 candidates a month, and to GlobalLogic, which she said hires against a single core skill for each role — an approach she said feeds internal mobility and retention.
“People leave their job because they’re bored,” Labrie said. “People leave their job because they’re not learning anymore.”
She also warned that AI in recruitment carries a cost, saying 62 per cent of job seekers won’t apply if they know AI is used and 38 per cent will withdraw partway through. Another 74 per cent won’t apply without a posted salary range, and 44 per cent will ghost an employer that doesn’t discuss pay during the process.
Covering three things during the interview — compensation, motivation and work location — makes candidates 33 per cent less likely to withdraw and 30 per cent more likely to be hired, she said.
Becoming a talent advisor
Labrie said only one in four managers is open to a recruiting team proposing changes to the hiring process based on labour market conditions. HR teams are consumed by posting, sourcing, screening and offer letters, she said, when they should be analyzing the market, building hiring strategies and cultivating pipelines.
Asked how to move stakeholders who insist every leader must interview separately, Labrie said to challenge the premise and put them in one room.
“Make it work. You want me to hire for this person,” she said, adding that candidates are often impressed when a full leadership team makes itself available at once. She said to ask the resisters directly: “Do you want to come back six times? I bet they won’t.”
She drew a line at entry-level roles, though, saying leadership panels are appropriate for mid- and senior-level candidates who expect them.
On assessments, Labrie said personality and skills testing is worth the investment, and that she uses the DiSC profile in her own firm.
Answering a question about candidates who overvalue themselves, Labrie said the problem is usually how they frame their case. Candidates need to talk about the results they will generate rather than list duties, she said.
“Your self worth is not always a good indicator for anyone, really,” she said.
