Time to hire halved for a Neu-Isenburg logistics company

Situation

A freight forwarder in Neu-Isenburg, 80 staff, hires ten to twelve people a year: dispatchers, customs clerks and sales support. Each vacancy took about 14 weeks from posting to signed contract. In the previous year three of eight offers had been declined, mostly because the candidate had signed elsewhere while the company was still scheduling a fourth interview. Every hiring manager ran their own process. There were no written job specs, and the decision was made in a corridor conversation after the last interview.

Approach

We audited the current process first: two weeks of conversations with the four hiring managers, the office manager who handled applications, and three recent hires. We mapped every step from vacancy to contract with its elapsed time. The 14 weeks split into roughly 3 weeks to write and post the ad, 5 weeks of unanswered applications, 4 weeks across four interview rounds and 2 weeks to get a contract out.

We delivered a prioritised list of recommendations, ranked by weeks saved per unit of effort. Then we built the material for the three recurring roles:

• a one-page job spec for each role, in plain language, checked against the equal-treatment rules
• a two-round interview structure: a 30-minute phone screen by the office manager, then one 90-minute on-site round with the manager and a future colleague
• a scorecard per role with five criteria and a scoring guide
• decision criteria: who decides, by when, and what a “yes” needs
• a response standard: every applicant hears back from the company within five working days

We trained the four hiring managers in a half-day session and sat in on the first interview each of them ran under the new structure.

Result

In this scenario the target cycle came out at 7 weeks: 1 week to post, 2 weeks to screen, 2 weeks to interview, 2 weeks to offer and contract. The first two hires under the new process took 6 and 8 weeks. Both offers were accepted. Applicant feedback improved because people heard back, which matters in a region where the same dispatchers apply to the same ten firms.

The office manager now runs the front end of the process without us. The material lives on the client’s shared drive as templates. When a new role comes up, the manager copies the nearest job spec and scorecard and adjusts it in an hour.

What it cost

€4,500 fixed price: process audit, prioritised recommendations, three job specs, interview structure, scorecards, decision criteria and a half-day training for four managers. That sits between our €2,900 audit tier and the €9,500 full-system tier, because the client needed three roles covered plus training, and no applicant-tracking software. The price was quoted before the work started. Job-board fees stay with the client and are outside the fee. The engagement is covered by our 100% money-back guarantee: full refund on request within 14 days of delivery.

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