Breakthrough Hiring Playbook — Issue 7
After ten years in recruitment, I still see the same challenges every day. Nearly everyone has been through a hiring process before, and most of the hiring managers, C suite, and team leads I work with have all run campaigns before. Yet somehow, we are still waiting a week to get feedback on a one hour interview.
The Myth of the Strong Brand
It is 2025 and I still hear it far too often:
“We have a strong brand, we can take our time.”
Even if you are well known, the top ten percent of candidates will not wait. They are speaking to multiple companies at once and have attention spans shorter than a loading screen. While you are deciding who should join the next interview, someone else has already offered them the job and probably sent them a branded hoodie too.
The slower you move, the weaker your brand looks.
Speed shows clarity, energy and confidence.
Delay shows confusion, indecision and a committee that cannot find a slot in the diary.
Whats going wrong?
I have seen great startups with brilliant cultures lose out simply because they move like corporates. It is rarely about money. It is about momentum. And indecision.. Mostly indecision.
The biggest offenders are easy to spot:
- Feedback that takes days
- Interviewers who all want a say but none want responsibility
- Scheduling thats slower than the NHS
- And my personal favourite, the candidate who never hears back because “we are still waiting on internal feedback”
Meanwhile, the smaller company with less funding, fewer people and no brand power sends an offer the same day. And wins. Probably before you have finished aligning calendars for round two.
Speed always wins!
A few weeks ago I saw this play out perfectly.
A small NYC startup, around twenty five people, run by an ex FAANG engineer now building an AI platform, went head to head with a well established Series C business based in San Francisco.
The San Francisco company had the bigger name, the stronger brand and a salary thirty percent higher. Their process took three and a half weeks with four stages including a coding test.
The NYC startup wrapped up in one week flat. Two interviews, a short tech review and a call with the founder. Feedback within twenty four hours, offer out the next day. They started hiring in the 2 week of the SF companies process..
The candidate took the smaller company. Not because it was safer or smarter, but because it felt alive. The process had a pulse. The other one had a project plan.
That is the difference. Candidates do not always choose the best offer. They choose the process that makes them feel wanted. And if your process drags, they will assume your culture does too. Speed makes this feeling stay fresh!
So what can you do better?
Speed is not about cutting corners. It is about structure and commitment.
The best hiring teams do the basics, but they actually stick to them:
- Two stages, maximum
- Feedback within forty eight hours
- Scorecards so everyone knows what good looks like
- Offers within twenty four hours of the final interview
- Admin automated, not delegated to the most stressed person in HR
The companies who win do not have shorter processes. They have planned ones. The difference is that when they say they will move fast, they actually do, rather than promising speed and then holding a debrief two Thursdays from now because James is away.
The Wrap Up..
If you want a benchmark, here it is. Forty eight hours for feedback. Seven days from CV to offer. That is textbook hiring in 2025. If you have this process, you will always have first pick!
But none of this matters if you do not prepare before you start. No one can expect a team to move quickly if time has not been blocked, if expectations have not been shared, and if no one knows who owns which part of the process.
Whether you hire internally or with external help, you need the groundwork done before you even post the job. For example, we are about to start hiring for a developer. Before the first CV even lands, we have already mapped it out:
- Feedback within forty eight hours
- Interviews on fixed days with time blocked in diaries weeks before you start
- Feedback calls booked the next day
- Offers within twenty four hours once feedback is done
- Contracts ready and with the candidates in 24 hours after accepted offer
- Introduction call booked in with the candidate after the contract is signed
If your process does not look like this, you are not being thorough, you are being forgotten. Even if you are the better company, slow hiring makes you look worse. It kills energy, kills excitement and gives your competitors a free shot.
Now, I am not saying processes cannot take longer. They can. I work with companies every day that take more time. However, the longer the process usually means more moving parts, more effort and more risk. If you need extra stages, that is fine, but you need to understand that additional time means more factors outside your control can derail it. There are always exceptions, and this is not a one size fits all, but I am happy to put my reputation on the line and say this: if you move fast, you will always have a better chance of securing the top candidates.
And I am pretty sure no one will argue with me on that.
