It takes eight to twelve weeks to fill a position. Often significantly longer for management positions. This is what Robert Half’s current time-to-hire compass shows. Anyone who reads the numbers carefully will find the real problem is not in the market, but in the mirror.
Yes, the skills shortage is real. But 13 percent of the HR managers surveyed admit that internal processes lead to candidates dropping out. This is not a side note, but an admission: companies lose people they have already found.
Time-to-hire is not a recruiting problem. It is an organizational problem. Anyone who needs four signatures before an offer is made, who tests talent in three rounds of discussions and with six weeks to think about it, who gives hiring managers tasks but without a mandate, will not lose because of the market, but because of their own mistakes.
Even the supposed “savior” AI will not solve this problem: digitizing a dysfunctional process only results in a faster dysfunctional process.
What helps: understand recruiting as a matter for the boss. Give decision-making authority downwards. Understand speed as a quality feature – not as a risk. The best talents have long since signed. Somewhere else.
Practical tip
More and more applicants are using large language models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini to find out about their potential employers or to search for jobs. The consequence: Visibility no longer only arises through Google rankings, but also through presence in AI-generated answers.
What SEO is to Google, Generative Engineering Optimization (GEO) is to AI search – the decisive lever for visibility. GEO adds a new level to the search for qualified specialists and HR a new task: optimization for machines that not only collect data, but also generate and evaluate content themselves.
In the fall of 2025, we had already published a much more limited tool for GEO optimization for HR, and we thought: There is something more possible. Sure, the results provided initial assistance with the AI optimization of career pages. However, we wanted to
more: concrete recommendations for action, in-depth help with optimizing individual elements and a clear roadmap on how you can make your career page or job advertisement ready for GEO as quickly and effectively as possible. Now is our new GEO check complete.
Important: The GEO check analyzes your website to see whether it is AI-optimized. However, the tool itself does not work with artificial intelligence. In other words: The analysis is based on actual results and hard facts. Hallucinations, one of the most feared sources of errors in large language models, will not occur with our tool.
The GEO tool checks career pages and job postings based on five categories: accessibility for AI, page structure, text elements, technical distinction and readability for AI.
Curious? Then do the check now – and see in just a few minutes where your career page or job advertisement really stands in the AI age and what adjustments you can still make to take your recruiting to the next level.
Info
According to the authors, the so-called Time-To-Hire Compass examines how long companies in Germany need to fill certain open positions and what factors influence the duration.
Sven Frost is responsible for HR tech, which includes the areas of digitalization, HR software, time and access, SAP and outsourcing. He also writes about recruiting and employer branding. He continues to be responsible for the editorial planning of various special human resources publications.
