Here’s a conversation that I bet you’ve all had at least once this year.

Me: “Offer made, offer rejected. We’re back to square one.”

The Client: “What happened?”

Me: “We took 3 weeks to hire him and he’s taken something else.”

The Client: ” But I interviewed him 2 weeks ago, and gave you the decision there and then.”

Me: “Yeah I know, but he had been on the market for a week before we found him, and we’ve taken 3 weeks to go through the process. It’s just so long and complicated that he’s gone elsewhere”.

The Client: “So what do you suggest?”

Me: “Shorten it, make it less onerous, move quicker, and sort out your supply and demand modelling.”

The Client: ” Yeah, right – good luck fixing that!”

The facts are that top talent is on the contract market for less than 2 weeks - at best. If you expect the candidate to hang around whilst you go through a protracted process of approvals, second or third interviews, background checks, contractual back and forth before making an offer, then chances are, you’re wasting your time.

There are a few obvious solutions, such as choosing a partner that can optimise the search and first pass interviewing, whilst the Client obtain pre-approvals. Ultimately though, it’s about supply and demand management within your enterprise. Get that wrong and you’re just putting lipstick on a pig.

The Impact Team have a series of accelerators that help you change the root cause of the delays, streamline your demand assessment, and more effectively manage the supply options.

We don’t do lipstick and we don’t do pigs either.