Blog
Latest
Your best candidate just accepted another offer. And this isn’t the first time this has happened.
This particular role has been open for two months. You've got 93 unread applications sitting in your ATS. Your hiring manager is wondering why this is taking so long, and honestly? So are you.
The pressure to move faster is real. But here's what trips most people up: speed and fairness aren't at odds. When you actually understand where your time is going (and where bias creeps in), you realize that a lot of what slows you down is the exact same stuff that makes hiring unfair.
Where your time goes
Let's get specific about the bottlenecks, because this may come as a surprise.
The resume pile. You're manually reading through dozens (sometimes hundreds) of applications. This can take a minute, or it can take up to 10 if you’re really digging in. After hours, after a full day of meetings? Maybe you're skimming them in 2 minutes and making gut calls based on school names and company logos. Neither of these approaches is fast OR fair.
Vague job requirements. When the hiring manager says they need someone who has "5+ years of experience in a similar role," what are you really screening for? Without clear criteria, every resume review becomes a negotiation. You're slow because you're guessing. And when humans guess, bias fills the gaps.
The dreaded "one more interview" loop. You've talked to five solid people. No one's a perfect 10, so you schedule another round of interviews. Then another. Meanwhile, your top candidates are moving on, and you're left with whoever can afford to wait the longest (which usually isn't your most diverse candidate pool).
Radio silence. You know you should update candidates, but you've got seventeen other urgent tasks, so they hear nothing for three weeks. They assume you ghosted them. They take other offers. Your time-to-hire stretches out, and your reputation takes a hit.
These delays don't make hiring more thoughtful. They just make it slower and more biased. Exhausted humans making rushed decisions at the end of a long process aren't delivering fairness. They're delivering inconsistency.
Start with what you're really looking for
Fast, fair hiring starts with clarity. Not the fake clarity of "we want a rockstar with 5+ years of experience." Real clarity.
What skills does this role actually need? Not job titles. Not degrees. Actual skills – like the ability to analyze data and spot trends. The capacity to learn new systems quickly. The resilience to handle ambiguity and keep moving forward.
Once you're clear on that, build everything else backward. If you need someone who can prioritize competing demands, your interview should test that (not ask them to describe a time when they multitasked). If you need technical proficiency, give them a realistic problem. If you need learning agility, create a scenario that requires them to figure something out on the spot.
This kind of structure speeds you up because it eliminates the endless debate about whether someone is "the right fit." When everyone's evaluating the same concrete criteria, decisions get faster and fairer.
Fix your front door
The biggest time-sink (and the biggest fairness issue) is usually right at the beginning of the hiring process. How you handle that first wave of applications sets the tone for everything else.
Simplify your application. Every field you require is a barrier. Do you really need a cover letter? Do you need ten years of employment history? Probably not. Make it easy for people to apply, and you'll get more applicants AND move faster.
Use real knockout questions. If the role absolutely requires weekend availability or a specific certification, ask upfront. Not as a gotcha, but as basic information. This isn't unfair. It's transparent. You're saving everyone's time.
Let technology do what it's good at. AI-powered screening isn't about replacing human judgment. It's about getting humans the right information to make better decisions, faster.
A well-designed AI tool can spot transferable skills, adjacent experience, and traits like learning agility that manual resume reviews miss. It can evaluate every candidate against the same criteria, without getting tired or defaulting to pattern matching based on school names. It can flag candidates who've traveled a long distance to get where they are (the kind of grit and resourcefulness that traditional screening overlooks).
The fairness concern is valid. Plenty of AI tools are built on biased data and make things worse. But here's the reality: a recruiter skimming 100 resumes at 11PM, unconsciously favoring familiar school names and company logos, isn't exactly bias-free either. They're just tired.
The right technology removes personal identifiers, applies consistent criteria, and makes its reasoning transparent. That's not just faster. It's fairer.
Move fast once you know who you're talking to
Here's where speed and fairness become the same thing.
Slow hiring processes hurt the candidates who can least afford to wait. You’re not just competing with other companies, you’re competing with time and economic realities. People with caregiving responsibilities can't take multiple days off for endless interview rounds. People who need to work can't hang around for two months while you "think about it." People with competing offers won't.
When you've identified promising candidates, treat it like the priority it supposedly is:
Compress your timeline. Schedule your interview panel in advance. Do a half-day interview block instead of spreading conversations across three weeks. Make your decision within 48 hours while impressions are fresh.
Communicate constantly. A quick email ("We're moving you forward, and you'll hear from us by Friday") takes two minutes and completely changes the candidate experience. Silence signals disinterest. Transparency builds trust.
Make a decision. Not every hire will be perfect, and that's OK. Hire a person who meets your clearly defined criteria and has the capacity to grow. You can course correct later if needed. What you can't do is get back the great candidates who moved on while you were deliberating.
The shortcuts that aren't actually shortcuts
Not all speed is created equal. Some "fast" decisions are just bias wearing a stopwatch.
Hiring someone because they went to your alma mater and "get it"? That's fast. It's also lazy, exclusionary, and probably illegal.
Skipping structured interviews to "just vibe it out"? Feels efficient, but it predicts nothing about job performance and lets unconscious bias run the show. It’s a great approach if you want a team that doesn’t challenge you or themselves.
Pressuring your team to decide by end-of-day because the role's been open too long? That's fake urgency, and it leads to regrettable hires that cost you way more time when you need to do it all over again in six months.
Real speed comes from removing friction (unclear criteria, manual busywork, unnecessary steps). Not from removing the structure that keeps hiring fair.
Speed + fairness = happy recruiters
There’s a difference between being deliberate and deliberating endlessly. Hiring slowly doesn't make you more thoughtful. It makes you slow.
Hiring quickly without structure doesn't make you more efficient. It leads to unintentional bias.
The answer isn't picking between speed and fairness. It's building a process where they reinforce each other. Remove the bottlenecks that waste everyone's time without adding value. Use technology to handle what it's good at (pattern recognition, consistency, tireless evaluation) so humans can focus on what they're good at: judgment, context, and connection.
Your next great hire is probably sitting in your ATS right now, waiting for someone to actually see them. The question isn't whether you can afford to move faster. It's whether you can afford not to.
How much could your company save by combining both speed and effectiveness? Watch the video to find out.