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In the fast-paced world of finance, securing top talent is crucial for success. However, the process of finding and hiring the best finance professionals is often fraught with challenges. As the finance talent market becomes increasingly competitive, attracting and retaining exceptional candidates has become even more demanding. Long, slow hiring processes can make it difficult to attract and retain finance talent and can have surprising hidden costs for your business.

Join us as we explore the hidden costs, from missed revenue opportunities to the difficulty of attracting the finest finance talent, and gain insights to optimise your hiring strategy. Finance leaders and hiring managers, this is your guide to mitigating the impacts and securing your competitive edge.

Why Can Hiring Be Such A Slow Process?

The median time to hire, i.e. the time between placing an advert to beginning the onboarding process, in the finance and financial services industries is 46 days. Hard to fill roles that require niche skills can take even longer. That’s over a month where your business is losing productivity, and revenue, due to an open vacancy.

So why can hiring be such a lengthy process?

One reason is that it can take time to find the candidate that is the best possible match for the requirements of the roles and the best cultural fit for your business. But there are other potential roadblocks to finding the perfect candidate quickly, such as:

• Greater competition for niche and in-demand skills can make it hard to attract skilled candidates
• Extra steps added to the recruitment process such testing, multiple interview stages and background checks can put candidates off from apply or make the process longer
• Larger companies often have more complex and structured hiring processes which can slow down hiring
• Equally, managers in smaller companies without dedicated HR departments must fit hiring around day-to-day tasks, something that can be made more difficult with open vacancies
   

4 Ways A Long Hiring Process Can Negatively Affect Your Business … And What You Can Do About It

Unfortunately, lengthy hiring processes can negatively affect your business in multiple ways. If you are hiring for an existing position taking too long to fill the role can lead to empty desks reducing the effectiveness of your finance team as remaining staff scramble to pick up the slack. There are other, more longer lasting negative effects as well, including:
 

1. Increased costs and loss of revenue
   The longer it takes to fill a vacant position, the longer you operate without a full workforce, potentially resulting in missed business opportunities. A prolonged hiring process may also lead to the loss of qualified candidates to competitors, further reducing your ability to generate revenue.

To attract top talent, you may have to offer higher salaries particularly if the job market is competitive. This can strain your budget and increase overall labour costs. There are also hidden costs to consider such as advertising, background checks, and administrative expenses which accumulate as the hiring process goes on.
 

2. Loss of productivity
   When a position remains vacant for an extended period, existing employees may become burdened with additional responsibilities, leading to burnout and decreased morale. This, in turn, can result in a decline in their performance and enthusiasm for their work, ultimately affecting the quality of work provided.

Unfilled positions can also create gaps in customer support, resulting in longer response times and potential dissatisfaction among customers. Long hiring processes can have a negative effect on team spirit, undermine employee engagement, and negatively impact the overall customer experience.
 

3. Miss out on the best talent
   65% of employers say they have lost out on their preferred candidate due to a lengthy hiring process. When the recruitment process is too slow candidates can lose interest. Not to mention that delays give your competition the chance to swoop in and snap up the best candidates.

Another way that a long hiring process can affect your ability to attract candidates is that a poor experience once often sours your reputation for long time with a candidate. Making them unlikely to apply to you again, and increasing the possibility they will pass on their experience to others. In an industry experiencing a talent shortage, like technology or finance, this makes the pool of potential talent even smaller.
 

4. Damage to your employer brand
   When employees witness an extended hiring process, it can reduce their trust and confidence in the organisation. It may convey a sense of inefficiency or disorganisation, reducing employee satisfaction and engagement. Previously happy employees may choose to look elsewhere, compounding the problem.

How you are perceived as an employer externally can also be negatively impacted by a prolonged hiring process. Long delays deter potential candidates from applying or accepting job offers. It sends a message that the company may not value talent or be slow to make decisions. This can ultimately harm your ability to attract top talent and maintain a positive reputation in the industry.
 

Solving the problem of long, unwieldy recruitment processes can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of talent acquisition for finance leaders and hiring managers. This can be approached from several angles to establish the most robust and agile processes:
 

• Streamline and standardise hiring processes by removing unnecessary steps, establishing clear criteria for evaluating candidates and using consistent interview questions
   
• Improve communication to avoid candidates feeling uninformed or ignored throughout the process
   
• Use technology to reduce administrative tasks. An Applicant Tracking System can perform a variety of tasks from CV screening, interview scheduling and automating communication
   
• Invest in strengthening your employer brand by using it to highlight your culture, values, and benefits to differentiate your organisation and make it more appealing to potential candidates
   
• Build robust talent pipelines that focus on building relationships with potential candidates even before job openings arise to create a pool of qualified candidates ready to be considered when positions become available.
   
• Collaborate with specialist recruiters with expertise in your industry. They can help streamline the hiring process by sourcing and pre-screening qualified candidates, saving you time and effort

The impact of these effective recruitment practices on your business is not to be underestimated.
 

Make your recruitment processes more effective with FinTop Consulting

As the go-to recruitment consultants for finance, tech, and compliance roles, FinTop can help you develop a skills-based hiring strategy designed to attract high calibre candidates with the skills and expertise your business needs, quickly.

Our consultants work to build an understanding of your unique HR needs which when combined with our specialised industry knowledge becomes a powerful tool to attract and retain exceptional talent.

Don’t waste time with the wrong candidates. Connect with your perfect match today.