Hiring professionals: How long does recruitment process take at your company?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So I am job hunting and have sent out MANY applications over the last month and not even a nibble of an interview offer. Some jobs are a bit of a stretch but others seem like my skills* are a tight match. So I’m starting to worry a bit. Yikes! So before I enter full panic mode I am hoping some info from the teeming masses might help talk me down a bit.

So for HR pros and others involved in the hiring process… For your company how long do you advertise a post? How long does it take from close of application notifying candidates to organize interviews? And how long after interviews until an offer is made?

I have been reading on Glassdoor and other such sites and it seems some companies move in mere days and some wait months. I suspect the range of replies to this thread may prove that such a varied response is true.

And finally… is a LinkedIn profile and other online presence an absolute critical thing these days? (You all are probably screaming YES!) I was living 16 years overseas until recently and have zero social media in my name and probably am a complete blank on a background check or credit report. But I thought credit report and background check would only be run after an interview, right?

Thanks for thoughts, answers, positive vibes, and any help that you can throw my way.
*

[spoiler]
I have 11.5 years in a 9-1-1 call center, of which 9 years was as a supervisor. I was working in the Cayman Islands and know we were well paid as 9-1-1 centers go. I was earning about US$51K per year. I expect a pay cut coming Stateside but this needs to happen so I can finally sponsor my family’s immigration.

Now that I am back in the States I’ve applied for call center positions, as manager, supervisor, or even just call taker and no replies. :eek: Also applied as dispatcher at a few companies, taking repair request info and organizing repair crew travel and such.

Due to some spinal problems I have some physical limitations and cannot stand for long or walk far unaided. I use a walker but otherwise can do a desk job just fine. I don’t think any of this is an issue since I’m not even getting the interview and places don’t know I have a disability.

Alas pay here in Upstate SC for 9-1-1 jobs is below the minimum I can accept. I need at least enough to be able to sponsor visa applications for Mrs Iggy and the step kids. That’s 1.25 times federal poverty limit, so around US$32K is the minimum.[/spoiler]

2

No suggestions, just best wishes.

3

If you’re not getting any calls at all, it’s almost certainly your resume that’s the problem. Have you had others look at it?

In my experience, at a mid/senior individual contributor level, it’s taken me 2-1/2 months from application date to first day on the job .

4

Thanks for the replies. I’m thinking perhaps it is too soon to panic. Only one job advert listed a specific closing date for applications and that was just May 31.

I did have my resume re-written by an HR pro. She seemed to think I would have good luck. Alas she is halfway across the country and cannot hire me.

Anyone want to hire a guy with experience talking down a man who was holding his family hostage at gunpoint? I figure since I did that I can deal with upset callers on a customer service line.

Job hunting is a miserable experience.

5

It is, and what I noticed the last time I was job-hunting (three years ago) is that, with the prevalence of online job sites, applications, and resume forms, it’s become very common for companies to not send out any sort of rejection notice. It definitely makes it feel like you’re just throwing applications into the void.

It can be frustrating as hell, but best wishes on the hunt!

6

Good luck to you, and hang in there. My husband has just started a new job and as far as how long the process takes, etc, I think it often just depends on the company. I know in one instance he was invited to an initial interview with an HR person. It went well, but the person who actually made hiring decisions for the department he’d be in was out of town for three weeks, in the meantime, he went through the whole process with another company which came back with an acceptable offer.

7

It’s not much better for my 16 year old son looking for his first job.

8

Good luck.

Data point: I’m about to interview for a job. The position was advertised for about six weeks and as soon as it closed it was open again for another six weeks. There are multiple jobs going, they’re not just looking for one person. From the closing date for the advertisement that I applied for, to the interview date is about six weeks. If successful I’m expecting a job offer within a couple of weeks of the interview. So about eight weeks from application to job offer.

Another data point: I know someone else who is in the same industry who interviewed for a similar company over a year ago and have been given a “yes” but are waiting on a start date.

Conclusion, it varies! No rules, even within the one industry.

9

One place you might want to check in your area is hospitals and universities, which often have their own police/public safety people. I live in NC and work for a university which has its own police force. I did a quick check and found a position for an emergency/non-emergency dispatcher in the $40,000 range at one of the other colleges in our system. It’s a staff position so I would expect for that sort of job it’d be interviewed for and filled with a couple months, max.

10

At my company, the ideal applicant has a short resume and more details on LinkedIn for the hiring manager to use to help narrow down the ‘maybe’ pile of applicants.

Not having a LinkedIn isn’t a good thing, at least in my department. We had a horrible experience with a technophobe employee a couple of years ago.

11

LinkedIn is basically a place to hang your resume; the few times I’ve been part of selecting someone as opposed to being selected, we used it to check that what was posted there matched what we’d received. We had been sent two identical resumes for two different people; a Google search turned up several identical LinkedIn profiles, for those guys plus a handful of others. We reported them.

There may be people out there who give a shit about how many links you have (otherwise I wouldn’t get linking requests from people in Bumfuck, Colombia, that I’ve never met and aren’t even in my sector), but I don’t think it’s common.

I work in a high-speed recruiting environment, but we’re sensitive to budgetting periods. My quickest hiring times have been in the less than a week range; I’ve had people calling me back two months after sending my cv in response to the targetted email they’d previously sent me, and yes, they were calling about the position in that email. And then there’s the ones who call you six months later - after the guy they liked best happened to not work out :stuck_out_tongue:

12

Great suggestion. Alas the hospital system has a hiring freeze on. I’ll make some inquiries with public universities but the local private university is a place I would rather strongly prefer to not work for.

I’ll spend the morning rounding out my LinkedIn profile more fully. Can’t hurt.

13

We process new hires pretty quickly most of the time. The first step is getting through two tests. Pass the first one (you can only get 1 wrong answer) and then you get to take the second one. Pass that and you could be hired in as little as two weeks. A lot of the quick ones are people working for our customers who already are familiar with our software and medical system protocols and standards. We also hire a lot of summer interns who have graduated, usually with more than 1 internship under their belts. The tests are the tough part, at some times only 1 in 1000 applicants have gotten through them. Traditionally if you don’t pass you don’t ever get to try again, but we need people so badly that some people are getting a second chance.

14

Hey, Mrs Iggy is Colombian and I’ve traveled there a lot. Bumfuck is between Armenia and La Florida, somewhere in southern Risaralda department, right? Maybe I know him. :stuck_out_tongue:

I’ll focus more on getting more information up on LinkedIn and not worry so much about making connections.

15

This!^

And, unfortunately, this^ as well.

16

Just did my annual credit reports and a Google search of my name. Thought maybe something might be wrong that I wasn’t aware of, but no. Credit looks good. And I don’t share a name with any escaped serial killers or such.

Looking for something interim while I play the long game for a more permanent post. Will talk to a couple temporary services agencies to see about any short term projects.