Not quite.
It is too lengthy, I admit. The baseline we established, which I shared with the committee, was 197 days for an externally advertised process. Again, that is one type of selection process, but we also have an internally advertised process. I think the baseline was established at 180 days. We've already seen slight improvements in the last year, with 193.5 days as the new result for last year for the externally advertised.
Working with departments, we have taken a number of measures to simplify their approach to staffing and to remind them, of course, that there are alternatives to fully advertised external processes, such things as using pools. Hiring a former student is a very simple process and takes a fraction of that time.
At this point, maybe just looking at the numbers recently, six months into the year we were averaging about 169 days for an externally advertised process, as compared to the 197, and for the internal, we were around 175 days on average, as compared to with the 180. These are partial results. We're going to monitor them and see what the year-end numbers are, but I think we're headed in the right direction.
I'm also seeing lots of evidence of departments taking action to be able to cut back on that time. We've done a number of speed staffing events with universities in Quebec and Atlantic Canada and recently at York University, which again allows the connection between hiring managers and highly qualified students, even before they graduate.