By Chelsea Babin

Employers everywhere are scratching their heads wondering why finding the right candidate feels like it’s taking forever. No, they’re not imagining it, the DHI measured the national average time length for a vacancy to remain open and, as of April 2015, it’s climbed to 27.3 workdays. For reference the average duration in January of 2014 was only 21.3 workdays.

While this figure gives a great insight on how much time it takes to hire top talent, it factors in every industry. The IT industry, with an unemployment rate of only 2%, is facing a much longer average job vacancy. To get the full picture of why this number is continuously rising at a rapid rate you need to factor in demand, availability of talent, and the various steps required in the IT interview process.

It’s no surprise to any technical professional that their average salaries are skyrocketing—particularly in hot skillsets such as Android and iOS—because demand for technical professionals has rapidly increased over the past few years and shows no signs of slowing down. With such high demand IT professionals are looking to higher salaries, better benefits, and growth opportunities to sway their decisions.

Even offering competitive salaries, better benefits, and growth opportunities isn’t enough to find top technical talent for some companies. Because there’s a lack of technical talent available or unemployed, employers are going after the same candidates. This high level of competition and the lack of available technical talent have contributed to the lengthening of the average job vacancy and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The final contributing factor to the higher average job vacancy is the complex and extensive interview processes many organizations require for technical professionals. From group panel interviews to candidate presentations, from background checks to technical tests, and from phone interviews to multiple in person interviews, it’s easy to see why so many days have been added to the average job vacancy. Glassdoor found that in 2015 the average overall job interview process took 22.9 days in 2014, which is a significant increase over previous years.

Employers who are seeking in demand technical talent are often floored by how long the process actually takes but, out of the three contributing factors—increased demand, talent shortage, and extensive interviews—the final is the only one that companies can control. By reducing some of the required steps throughout the interview process, employers can attempt to combat the rising average job vacancy and save their organization money. After all, having a job vacancy is not just a hassle, it’s a rather expensive problem. As the average job vacancy continues to rise this cost will only increase so it’s best to combat that now in any way possible.