What’s taking so long? (Paul Viant/Getty)
When you’re waiting to hear back about whether you got the job, it can feel like it’s taking forever. But new research shows that the hiring process for Canadians, on average, moves faster than most comparable countries.
Canadian workers wait an average of 22.1 days after applying to learn whether they’ve gotten the job, according to crowdsourced jobs review site Glassdoor. By comparison, Americans wait 22.9 days. French workers wait more than a month—31.9 days—before hearing back.
For the study, researchers analyzed a a sample of more than 340,000 job interview reviews posted anonymously on the site to determine whether hiring is moving faster or slower today compared to previous years.
However, the data also shows the situation has actually worsened in the years after the global financial crisis. In 2010, it took Canadians between 10 to 15 days to get hired. Four years later, that number has jumped to anywhere between 20 and 25 days.
So what’s the hold-up? Despite several years of steady recovery, Canadian employers are being more selective these days, using additional filters to screen candidates, Glassdoor chief economist Andrew Chamberlain writes in the report. These include group panel interviews, skills tests, IQ tests and drug tests: “Taken together, these small hiring delays from additional interview screens can add up.”
Companies often make candidates jump through hoops in order to avoid high employee turnover, which can wind up being a costly affair. However, there’s some evidence to suggest this strategy is less effective than hoped.
“For example, we find larger companies take dramatically longer to hire candidates than small and mid-sized firms,” writes Chamberlain. “Are bigger companies really getting much better job matches than their mid-sized competitors? Probably not.”
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