Analytics for Measuring RPO Success

Recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, can have an enormous effect on a company’s recruiting and hiring function, and therefore it’s overall success. However, it’s not enough to claim impressive results. To make such a claim, you need to be able to back it up with facts and figures. In this article, based on the RPOA webinar “Time to Consider Recruitment Process Outsourcing” with speaker John Younger, CEO of Accolo, we discuss analytics for measuring RPO success.

Metrics

When you engage with an RPO provider, you need to be able to measure the engagement’s effect on your recruiting function. For this to happen, you need to have specific metrics that you can use to measure the before and after of an RPO engagement. Four key metrics that you can use to measure your RPO engagements effects are:

Hiring manager satisfaction. This metric measure whether the hiring manager is getting what they need, from their perspective.

Cost. Accolo developed a cost metric that they call the recruiting cost ratio, which is the actual cost of recruiting (the total costs) divided by the total base compensation of the individuals recruited.

Days to present. This metric is the number of days from when the job goes live and when the person who is ultimately hired is found, vetted and presented to the hiring manager.

Days to accept. This is the number of days from when the job goes lives to when the person who is ultimately hired accepts the job offer.

These four metrics can be used to measure the effect of an RPO engagement on the company’s existing personnel, their recruiting costs and bottom line, and the speed of hire for open positions. After Accolo surveyed multiple companies using these metrics, they found that RPO engagements had the following results:

• The recruiting cost ratio went from 11.9% pre-RPO to 6.5% post-RPO
• Hiring manager satisfaction jumped from 43% pre-RPO to 88% post-RPO
• Days to present declined from 25 days to 8 days
• Days to accept declined from 60 days to 45 days.

According to the Accolo research shown in the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association webinar, companies saw a marked improvement in each of the of the four metrics used to measure RPO engagement success. The metrics are interrelated, and a change in area can cause a shift in another. For example, hiring manager satisfaction is directly related to days to present and days to hire, so when the amount of time to present a candidate and have them accept the job decreases, hiring manager satisfaction increases.

Nationwide, there are over five million open positions, and over half of those open positions have been open for at least ninety days. This hurts company success, drives up hiring and recruitment costs, and damages hiring manager morale. RPO gives client companies an advantage by lessening the amount of time positions go unfilled, increasing hiring manager morale, and cutting recruitment costs, helping to position them for long-term greater success.

If you want to learn more about recruitment process outsourcing, you can listen to the RPOA webinar “Time to Consider Recruitment Process Outsourcing”.