I have worked for and with so many businesses that seem to take forever to move through the hiring process. I believe that once you commit to adding a new employee, you should move with expediency. Your business will benefit from the injection of new talent and your candidates will certainly appreciate (and share with others) how effective your company is at the hiring process.

I am making a couple of assumptions here I want to share before I suggest some improved process steps to you.

The assumptions are:

You have a job description, you have competency descriptions for the position and the compensation is defined.  You are using a web based job posting service like Monster.com or Careerboard.com and you have a defined process for what you want to do during the interviews.

Ok, on with my process suggestions.

Step 1: Place your job listing in the online service of your choosing.

Step 2: After one week, gather the resumes you have received and narrow them down to the 6-12 that you want to explore further.

Step 3: During week two, have a conference call with these 6-12 candidates, that’s right, a conference call.

During this call you explain more about the company and answer all of the questions you can and share the common information you would normally share in an in-person interview. This sharing of further information serves the candidates well, some will self-eliminate themselves from further consideration and it saves you calendar and interview time.

Step 4: Block out enough half-day’s of calendar time to give each remaining semi-finalist 60 minutes of in person, interview time and ask them to email you their preferred interview date and time. Conduct these interviews during week 3.

Step 5: After the 4-8 semi-finalist interviews, you should be down to 1-3 finalists. During week 4, bring the finalists in for further interview time or group interviews or maybe just further open discussion.

Step 6: Ok, the 30 days is almost up, you should be ready to hire, make an offer.