Rapid development of new technology has become the game-changer of how people conduct their work, including in the realm of human resource. The onset of innovative automation tools should have made it easier, cheaper, and faster for hiring managers to conduct a recruitment process. However, despite the automation of recruitment, the reality remains far from this ideal, as the practice of hiring new employees often come in complicated and lengthy process.

According to recent survey conducted by Randstad, the average hiring process has more than doubled, from 30 to 68 days in the past few years and job seekers are unhappy with such extended process. Conducted in September 2017 with 2,000 respondents from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, the survey found that a staggering nine in ten candidates surveyed (89 percent) stated that they will reject a job offer if the recruitment process took longer than four weeks.

Almost half of the survey respondents (44 percent) across countries would opt to reject a job offer if the process took between four and eight weeks. Meanwhile, the other 45 percent would reject a job offer if the process stretched more than eight weeks. Of the tree countries, job seekers in Singapore were the least willing to wait out the recruitment, with 91 percent stating they would reject a job offer if it took longer than four weeks.

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Managing Director for Randstad Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, Michael Smith said, “Automation helps improve efficiency in many ways along the recruitment process for a value-added experience. However, we need to be both flexible and balanced in the way we engage with the candidates to meet their expectations for a more personal experience. When it comes to human resources, personalisation is the key to success.”

With such findings, Mr Smith added that hiring managers need to work on more engagement efforts in the recruitment process. Automation processes should go hand in hand with human touch, as an attempt to personalise and improve the efficiency of the hiring as it is an important decision for job seekers.

The Randstad Candidate Expectation Survey also found that from job seeker’s perspective, the ideal recruitment process duration should last less than six weeks, with 94 percent candidates expect the process to be within six weeks for optimised efficiency. Additionally, majority of respondents (73 percent) expected the process to take between two and four weeks.

Job seekers in Malaysia opted to have a shorter time frame in recruitment, with 82 percent looking for the hiring process to take between two and four weeks. On the other hands, job seekers in Hong Kong were slightly more relaxed with the duration of recruitment process, as only 67 percent expecting two to four week time frame.

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