Recruiters - why does it take so long for a response?

casterlyrock · 24 August 2017 at 12:53AM

I'm currently looking for a new job, and have applied for dozens of roles. Few prospective employers respond in a reasonable amount of time, and the vast majority of them take weeks, even months to respond.

I appreciate that there are often hundreds of applicants, but the timescales for some vacancies being processed is bordering ridiculous.

For example, I applied for a role in mid-May - the closing date was the end of May. I received a response this morning inviting me to interview, roughly THREE months after I applied. I had already been offered interviews elsewhere for vacancies I had applied to since then.

This was not an isolated case. I would guess that 4 out of every 5 jobs I've applied to have taken much longer than expected to respond. The usual for me seems to be around 2-6 weeks following a closing date, but not unheard of for being 8 weeks or longer.

Surely employers have to take into account that potential employees have their own needs too and that competition may take the best candidates who are applying for multiple positions?

This isn't even taking into account the time it takes from response -> interview -> vetting/references -> start date. From application to starting seems to take months in many cases.

So, anyone working in HR/recruitment - why does it take so long? Very irritating!

Jamie20102 · 24 August 2017 at 1:29AM

I dont work in HR but in my past experience i applied for a promotion within my work went through interview and interview panel had the discussion about who would fill the post. This was within 2 months from the advert closing. Another 2 months to be told i had got the job. They were so keen to get me started I finished up in the depot on Friday this is the same day i was told i got the job, and started my new post the following Monday. I was told it was HR were short staffed and thats why it took time or they would have had me up earlier.

I have seen other reasons such as bosses getting time to schedule interviews, contact HR, go through applications, and then its back to HR to approve package, make the job offer reference checks, and then contact the sucessful candidate for start dates etc. I have seen bosses up to their eyes in work and forget to do many of the above things.

Depending on where it is from what i have seen its a lot of back and fourth between departments and each time the emails/paperwork just gets added to the to do list.

TELLIT01 · 24 August 2017 at 8:06AM

I don't work in HR, but as the OP has said, there can be hundreds of applicants. They need to be sifted by the agency and then in many cases the applications will be passed to the company they are working for to do a further sift. Those still in the hunt will be passed back to the agency for initial interview. It's not a quick or easy process.
Add into the mix possible holidays by those involved in the process and timescales can very quickly expand.

marlot · 24 August 2017 at 9:39AM

I used to make the long delays work to my advantage when I worked in a very flexible company (FTSE 100, so not small).

If the interview had gone well, I'd ask the candidate to wait ten minutes and get our HR team to issue a contract.

Several times, I managed to grab someone who was in the running for a job at a less agile firm - they were attracted to our 'just get it done' approach!

Unfortunately, I'm now in a traditional organisation, where everything seems to take much longer. :-(

Recruiters - why does it take so long for a response?

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