Recruiting has always been an exercise in trade-offs. 

From the company’s perspective, there is no such thing as the perfect hire. From the recruiting prospect’s perspective, the perfect employment opportunity does not exist.

As a recruiter or hiring manager, setting priorities ahead of time equips you to make sense of your recruiting and hiring decisions.

What are the priorities in your hiring process?

This is the question recently posed to hundreds of hiring managers by TATech in a survey on corporate talent acquisition.  

Here were the top four responses and the percentages of respondents listing the issue as their most important concern:

Improving quality of hire (41%)
Reducing time to hire (28%)
Improving the candidate experience (15%)
Reducing cost per hire (14%)

How would you prioritize this list? Take a minute to rank these objectives for your organization.

Once you’ve ranked them, recognize there’s a natural cause and effect dynamic to your priorities. 

If you want high quality hires, it takes more time and expense to acquire enough prospects to be selective. 

If you care little about what candidates experience during your hiring process, it affects what consumers think of your company. 

If you reduce costs and focus on speed, the quality of your hires is going to suffer.

Successful hiring managers set priorities and recognize that trade-offs exist. To ignore these realities is naïve.