An engineer walks out with no notice. You're a person down that morning, the work doesn't stop, and everyone else picks up the slack until you fix it. That's who this is written for.
Here's roughly how the first month goes with us.
Day one, we talk properly.
Not a form. A real conversation about what the person who left actually did all day, which is usually not what their job description said. We'll also be straight with you about money. If your budget is light for that skill set in your area, you want to hear it on day one, not in week six.
By the end of week one, you're seeing people.
We run the advert and work our own contacts at the same time. On an urgent role you can't afford a fortnight of waiting just to find out the advert didn't land.
Week two is usually where it goes wrong.
It's when the pressure kicks in to grab the first person who could start on Monday. We'd rather put a test in and be sure.
By about week four, someone has normally started.
Across our business the average time to hire is 29 days. Every division, every kind of role, the easy ones and the awkward ones together.
What we mean by a test
Not a personality questionnaire. Something closer to the job.
For an engineering role that usually means putting a real problem in front of someone and watching how they work through it. A fault to diagnose from a drawing. A situation they'd meet on a Tuesday, described properly, with a straight question about what they'd do first.
And it's worth the extra couple of days, because interviews reward the wrong thing. A confident, well-prepared candidate can talk fluently about work they've only ever watched somebody else do, and an hour in a room rarely separates that from the real thing. A practical test does, quickly, and it's fairer on the quieter candidate who is better at the job than at describing it.
So the cost is two or three days. The cost of skipping it is a hire who starts in week three and is gone by month four.
The bit most agencies leave out
That 29 days is an average, and averages hide the searches that go wrong. Sometimes the first person we find isn't right, and the honest move is to say so and start again rather than talk you into them.
And starting again costs us time we don't get paid for, which is precisely why we'd rather tell you than not. A hire made in a hurry who leaves in month four was never a fast placement. It's the same vacancy again before the year is out, except now the team has been short twice and nobody is pleased about it.
So when we quote you 29 days, that's an average with those restarted searches still counted in it. An agency that has never had to run a search twice is either very lucky or isn't telling you everything, and you'd find out which soon enough.
Fast doesn't mean sloppy
Being fast doesn't mean dropping your standards. It means not letting the process drag.
Because most of the delay on a slow hire isn't the searching, it's the waiting about. The brief takes three emails to pin down. Then the advert sits there for a fortnight before anybody looks at what it's pulling in, and when feedback does come back it's the following Tuesday. Sort that lot out and you've saved yourself a month without lowering the bar an inch.
If you're a person down right now and it's hurting, we'll look at what your engineering vacancy actually needs and tell you straight how fast it can move.
Book a call and we'll get going today.
