The Shocking Trick to Getting Hired: Applying Quickly?
A new study shows recruiters regularly choose candidates who respond immediately, even when they have a higher-quality option. Why that can backfire on firms.
Collaboration. Problem-solving. Agility. Thoroughness. Those are the skills and traits companies consistently say they want in their employees. And then there’s one that might surprise you: how fast you respond.
To the likely frustration of the millions searching in a tough job market these days, a new study finds that talent professionals regularly choose candidates who respond quickly to job posts—even when a higher-quality option is available. Indeed, delays of as little as a few minutes significantly impacted a candidate’s likelihood of being hired, according to research from George Mason and Vanderbilt Universities. Experts say many HR workers believe these applicants save them time amid their own pressing workloads. “It’s a shortcut on one end, but can lead to higher turnover on the other,” says Mark Royal, a senior client partner for Korn Ferry Advisory.
The new research, published in Management Science, analyzed 11 million transactions on Fiverr, an online marketplace that connects workers to employers for short-term work. A candidate who took more than one hour to respond to a work solicitation was 46% less likely to be hired than one who replied immediately. Folks who took longer might as well have skipped replying altogether: If they responded more than 24 hours after receiving a potential employer’s direct message, they were 90% less likely to be hired.
But there’s a catch: Response speed certainly can be a sign of keen interest in a role, but these days, it also can be a sign that someone is using AI. Regardless of their overall skills and traits, candidates can marshal AI not only to apply to dozens of jobs at once, but also to respond immediately to a recruiter. By privileging the earliest replies, organizations can miss out on well-qualified candidates who, for a multitude of reasons, may not be able to respond immediately to a recruiter’s question.
To be sure, the study focused only on short-term opportunities or freelance work. And experts say there are still plenty of organizations that just take too long to hire anyone, regardless of how fast a candidate answers a recruiter’s query. The nation’s hiring rate, which measures the number of new workers flowing into jobs relative to the existing workforce, is at a paltry 3.3%, one of the lowest levels seen in a decade. “There’s a minestrone soup of problems that has slowed down the hiring process at many organizations,” says David Ellis, Korn Ferry’s senior vice president of talent transformation. For instance, he says, many firms are unable to identify the skills their workers actually need.
Still, the researchers worry that some recruiters are letting the speed of a reply overly color their view of a candidate. In another experiment, the study’s authors asked recruiters to evaluate a group of candidates whose response speeds were varied. As it turned out, response speed positively predicted the recruiters’ evaluations of applicants’ competence, warmth, and expected future responsiveness; participants also reported that they would be far more likely to hire those who responded quickly. (This is consistent with earlier research by others, which indicated that recruiters consider response speed a valuable signal of other positive character traits.) More troublesome was that faster replies tended to outweigh lower-quality ratings of other candidate attributes.
Experts advise organizations to make sure they’re not overvaluing speed in other aspects of candidate vetting, either. They should ensure that interviews aren’t rushed, references are checked, and real concerns aren’t rationalized away. “Prioritize skills,” Ellis says.
Learn more about Korn Ferry’s Talent Recruitment capabilities.
