Construction, Property and Engineering Professionals Say If a Vacancy Is Open For 71 Days, It Must Be a Bad Job
25th September 2012

Employers need to fill job vacancies within 71 working days (15 working weeks) before construction, property and engineering professionals (CPE professionals) assume it’s a job no one wants, according to research carried out by Randstad CPE, the UK recruiter.

Randstad asked 2,001 members of the public, “How many working days does a vacancy for a permanent job have to be open before it starts to look like a bad job that no one wants?”

The UK’s working population said they thought a post has to be vacant 74 days before it looks like a bad job that no one wants, 3 day more than the CPE professionals.

In a similar survey, Randstad found that, on average, British CPE professionals feel they currently have to perform the job of 1.5 people meaning they are covering 50% more work than one person should be; the equivalent of fitting an additional two and a half days worth of work into the ordinary working week.

Owen Goodhead, managing director of Randstad CPE, “Recruiting is like trying to sell your house.  Leave it on the market too long and, for whatever reason, people start to think there is something wrong with it.  That leads to fewer applications and increased pressures on the rest of the staff left trying to cover the empty position.  We know CPE professionals already feel they are performing the job of one and a half people.  If they’re cramming an extra two and a half days worth of work into a working week, they are going to find it extremely difficult to cover for vacant job posts, too.”

As part of the research, recruitment consultants working at Randstad CPE were asked what the ideal length of time was to fill a vacancy, balancing the need to secure the best candidate for the job and the need for organisations to fill a skills gap. The poll found that given those criteria Randstad’s consultants thought 40 days (8 working weeks) was the ideal.

Owen Goodhead said, “While CPE workers won’t start judging a job negatively until the vacancy has been on the market for 71 days, the ideal recruitment window is actually nearly half this time. The best applicant is often the one who turns up early in the recruitment process. The trick is not to turn that person down in order to keep benchmarking  against other people who may or may not be in the market. If employers see the right person on the first day of the interviews, they need to have the courage of their convictions and hire the candidate straight away. If they don’t, they have to be prepared to see that job seeker walk into the arms of a competitor who is willing to move faster.”