Perhaps you feel that recruiters are all the same, and that recruiting services are a commodity. That may be true in some ways. Would you say the same about your doctor, dentist, attorney, hair stylist? Recruiting, like many professional services, can seem like a cheap commodity with one provider, or high-value experience with another. The question to ask is, can you derive enough value from the tailored, personalized, high-value experience of a true professional (in this case, recruiter)? If so, what would they need to bring to the table to make that decision easy? The recruiting metrics outlined below are the key differentiator to know if your recruiter is worth their salt.
The truth is, not every company needs to use a recruiter. While we would argue that a great recruiter is worth their weight in gold; it could also be said that some positions would not warrant the use of even the world’s best recruiter. Below are six attributes that any good agency (or corporate) recruiter should deliver consistently. It begs the following question: Can your recruiter even provide the data behind these six critical recruiting metrics?
Recruiting Metrics Overview
- Increase Candidate Quality
- Reduce Time-to-Hire
- Increase Candidate Volume
- Reduce Cost-Per-Hire
- Reduce Hiring Frustrations
- Generate Recruiting ROI
Increased Candidate Volume
Arguably, candidate volume is one of the recruiting metrics that may seem like the most important. That being said, candidate volume isn’t always the perfect measure. We suggest that the quality is in the quantity, and generally that is true. It can also be true that a blind squirrel will find a nut on occasion.
Candidate volume is the combination of active job seekers responding to job advertisements and passive job seekers responding to any form of unsolicited outreach (think referrals, social media, meet-ups, targeted lists, etc.). This is a simple calculation if you know basic math. Even so, the challenge for most corporate recruiters is they don’t have the time to source passive talent. Typically, this is due to the numerous other important duties associated with their jobs. If you have a great company and employer brand, it is likely you won’t need a lot of sourcing for many of your positions. Candidates will flock to reputable companies. For most companies, the opposite is true.
Increase Candidate Quality
As stated earlier, the quality is in the volume…sort of! True quality begins with a detailed intake meeting. What we’ve learned is that many recruiters (internal or agency) give only cursory attention to this for one or more reasons. They are in a hurry, make assumptions, over-burdened, lack experience/knowledge, or simply don’t understand how critical it is.
Nevertheless, a good intake meeting lays the groundwork to every other step in the recruiting process. Think of an intake meeting more like a blueprint than a sketch. Do you want to build a house with a napkin sketch? The details from a good intake meeting help form the job advertisement, sourcing strategy, and screening methodology. Try finding a solid candidate without any of these and you’ll feel like you are playing ‘pin the tail on the donkey’!
Reduce Time-To-Hire
Time to hire is simply the measure of time between opening a requisition and hiring a candidate. To improve Time-to-Hire, a great recruiter needs to complete a solid intake meeting to set the framework for the search, an effective search strategy, proper screening to reduce iterations in your interview process, and the proper technology to automate the time intensive manual steps in the recruiting process. We love to deploy automations and artificial intelligence to increase our recruiters’ capabilities (think “cam or turbo on an engine”). Combine all these and you can be sure you will fill your job in no time.
Reduce Cost-Per-Hire
Admittedly, of all recruiting metrics, this one is a tough measure to calculate due to the costs being both hard and soft. Take, for example, the cost to employee morale as a result of being improperly staffed, and the subsequent turnover as a result. This only exacerbates your problem! Certainly, this does not help build your employer brand either. Failing to fill a position in a timely manner almost certainly diminishes customer satisfaction (decrease service, fill times, or quality). When you start losing employees and customers, the costs skyrocket. Of course, the easier calculation is the calculation of time spent as a percentage of salary, agency fees, cost of job advertisements, applicant tracking systems, resume databases, agency fees, etc.
Reduce Hiring Frustrations
We have learned that hiring frustration is often correlated with a recruiter’s ability to satisfy the hiring manager through their knowledge, experience, attitude, and service (think recruiter quality), and results (the achievement of all the other points listed above). Ultimately, recruiting metrics provide an in-depth summary of all recruitment activity to ensure a successful search and reduces overall hiring frustration as a result.
Return on Investment
The simple truth is, many companies don’t get value from their agency, or even their corporate recruiters. That said, recruiters don’t have full control over ROI. Employers bear considerable responsibility in helping derive ROI from their recruiting and talent acquisition efforts. Think of it like this, if you buy a Rolex (or any other high-end product) and lay it on the driveway and run over it with your car then the watch will break and your financial ROI will be impacted. Your employee is the Rolex in this example, and your culture and leadership is the car and the driveway.
If you want to see a 30-minute demonstration on how we achieve results and ROI for our clients, get in touch here. We’d be happy to show you how our recruiters deploy our proven process for delivering results.
