Not Your Grandmother’s Recruitment Metrics

Written by Staff Writer | Wed, Jul 31,2013 @ AM

When you are under the hiring gun and need to ramp up your recruiting process so it’s the most effective tool for attracting and hiring top candidates, you need to power up your recruiting metrics. Turnover rate and cost-per-hire are flat, tired recruiting metrics based on historic data, not fresh, relevant information such as the costs of hiring the wrong person or gaps in the current workforce.

So what should recruiters and employers actually be measuring for the most relevant and meaningful impact on hiring? How can they most effectively measure recruiting activity so their recruiting dollars and efforts get the best results?

Power up your recruiting metrics by measuring the issues impacting your business and plug your recruiting process into meaningful information that generates the results you need.

Tactical is Practical

Tactical recruiting metrics build in continuous improvement standards and identify specific areas of recruiting for adjustments.

Offer Acceptance Rate Metric: An offer acceptance rate metric illustrates weakness in the offer process that causes loss of top candidates. Improving acceptance rates saves time and money and avoids losing candidates to the competition.

Most Productive Candidate Sources Metric: A metric that tracks which sources produce the best hires, such as employee referral hires and intern program hires, give recruiters an indication of where to allocate their time sourcing candidates.

Recruiting Process Satisfaction Metric: Metrics that record satisfaction with the process, usually by surveying hiring managers, new hires, and applicants, point employers and recruiters to opportunities for improvement.

Employer Brand Strength Metric: Gauging employer brand strength with various methods such as looking at comments on glassdoor.com or a Google search of the employer and openings also highlights opportunities for improvement.

Business Impact

Get beyond the quality of hire metrics and start measuring recruiting impact on the business.

Innovator Metrics: Evaluate what percentage of new hires are innovators by surveying hiring managers asking which hires go beyond the job description to help move the business forward or create extraordinary value.

Project Delays Metrics: Use project delays metrics that are calculated by surveying project managers to ask if projects have been delayed by recruiting, and reveal the number of project delays, project days lost, and cost of project delays due to recruiting.

Key Positions Vacancy Metrics: Measure how many days key revenue-generating positions are vacant and how much it costs every day or every revenue period the positions are not filled.

Diversity Metrics: Create diversity metrics to track how many high-level diversity hires you make for companies with diversity initiatives, how close or far the company is from meeting diversity goals, and other diversity issues important to the company.

Powerful Predictive Metrics

Using predictive metrics along with traditional recruiting metrics can create a powerful strategic tool and a competitive advantage.

Stop looking only at cost as it pertains to fees and length of time a position is vacant and help your company adjust and plan recruiting for upcoming hiring challenges and opportunities by looking at predictive metrics:

Keep an eye on forecasted unemployment rates.
Check for news and industry information on the level of recruiting competition from competitors’ hiring or layoffs.
Use forecasted labor costs as a guide in recruiting.

Why Power Up Your Metrics?

Meaningful and relevant recruiting metrics go beyond cost to hire and numbers hired and look at the true values in the hiring process. They allow recruiters to show company owners and stakeholders how an aspect of the hiring process impacts the business. A recruiting standard that produces new hires who become innovators or identifies the best sources for outstanding candidates who get hired quickly raises the bar. It improves the level of recruiting success, and creates a competitive recruiting edge that builds the company.

Don’t rely only on traditional time-to-fill and cost-per-hire metrics. When your recruiting performance is on the line and you need to improve recruiting results, powering up your recruiting metrics gives your process the juice it needs to drive best practices that produce great hires. It takes more time and attention than your normal recruiting campaign, but it will build bench strength and enable you to get more ROI from your recruiting dollars.

What do you expect your ROI to be on recruiting from job boards, social media, and referrals? View this information-rich, stats-intense webinar on: Amazing Charts & Stats About Candidate Sources.

Evaluating Your Job Posting Strategy

About the author: Andrew Greenberg has over 17 years of experience in Talent Acquisition. Industry-educated with a Master’s Degree in Personnel Psychology, Andrew draws upon a background that is rich with experiences from both Corporate and Agency staffing environments.

He is the founder and Managing Partner of The Recruiting Division, a leader in U.S. based RPO-style recruitment solutions.

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