The Job Market Is Good and You’re Competing | No BS HIring Advice Radio

I heard a story today from a friend of mine who owns a recruiting firm, I will tell you where it is. He has a client that's hired a bunch of people from him. They are always slow. So they give him a job in another city from where he lives; he finds someone for them. The guy works for a unit of a well known tech firm. I'll leave it at that.
The process goes on for two months. They talk with him four or five times. Seehey were the point of flying him in. It takes two weeks for them to get around to deciding that they're going to call him to schedule. In the meantime, he has told them, "Look, I have an offer, I will need to respond to it by such and such date." The fly in is on that date. Can you believe this? They scheduled the fly in for the day he's supposed to respond. And then, to make matters worse, the offer that he has is with a firm that they have a non-compete with. In other words, procrastination is costing them a person that they'll want to hire and competitors are going to get with whom they have a non-compete.
So, at the end of the day, they blow it. When all is said and done, where can you streamline your process? Because in this market, and it is a good market now, people have choices, particularly exceptional talent. Exceptional talent, even had choices during the recession but, in this market, firms are bidding for people. You can't stall because other people are in there trying to influence. The more you stall, the less excited they are about your opportunity and the more likely it is that they will accept something else.
Now, if you're going to have that arrogant attitude of, "If they are not going to want us . . . ," Well, they want someone who's interested in them. It's like dating. You know, if you don't get a call for two weeks after the first date, you kind of get the idea that they're not interested, right? It's no different in the interviewing. And, if you then go to the, "Well, he should be a grown up about this," like I've heard from so many firms, well, let me let you in on a secret.
If you were on his side of this situation, you wouldn't be happy with the firm either. So, I'm just telling you pick up the pace on your interviews. Push your hiring managers to take action. I'm not saying instantly hire. I'm talking about evaluating and assessing and bringing things to a conclusion, Yay or Nay, instead of stalling things for three months like in this guy's case, from time of first submission, the first interview to four interviews, they decide to fly him in, to scheduling the actual thing, to discovering he has an offer, he's accepting to go to work for a competitor.