#TalentAttraction #Tuesday Recruiting Metrics Revisited

By RecruiterGuy | June 2, 2020

Does your company track your recruiting metrics? If so, when was the last time your company re-examined what you measured? As a Talent Attraction Expert with 39 years of Recruitment/Talent Acquisition experience, the most interesting aspect of recruiting metrics is they are generally solely focused on Recruiter metrics instead of the Hiring Team. The Hiring Team consists of everyone in the Talent Attraction process – Recruiters, Hiring Managers, Human Resource Staff – and everyone involved in all aspects of the offer approval. Unless the whole hiring team is measured on their performance, the process measurement breaks down.

When Do Recruiting Metrics Drive The Wrong Behavior?

The best practice for process improvement is to measure what works well and what is not working. Sometimes the area that is being measured creates unintentional consequences.

For instance, does your company measure the number of applicants for a position? If so, what is the purpose of this measurement? Is the purpose to measure how well your recruitment marketing is performing? Is the purpose one where your company feels more candidates who apply equates to a better chance of interviewing, selecting, and hiring the best talent?

If the purpose is the latter purpose, then what could be the unintentional consequence? Is it possible that the action to attract more candidates is to weaken the job description so more candidates will fit? I have seen this solution in action.

In some of my speeches, I discuss the importance of a specific job description. The job description is the Foundation of the ENTIRE Recruiting Process. The more specific a job description, the greater opportunity to source the right candidates.

When a company has a vague description to attract more candidates, this could be (and often is) the result.

The recruiter recruits and screens a pool of the wrong-fit candidates. From the pool of the wrong-fit candidates, the manager selects a smaller pool of the wrong-fit candidates to interview. From the smaller group of the wrong-fit candidates the manager interviews, the manager shrugs and feels this is the best they are going to get, so they select the best of the wrong-fit candidates to hire. Is there good news from all of this? Yes – in 2 months to 2 years, the manager decides this was a bad decision and fires the Right wrong-fit employee. What happens next? They pull out the old job description and begin the process all over again. What possibly could go wrong?

Which Recruiting Metrics are generally used?

Over the course of my experience, the following metrics are most utilized:

Number of candidates needed to fill the position (see previous section on the Wrong Behavior)
How many of those candidates were interviewed?
Of candidates interviewed, how many received offers?
Of candidates offered, how many accepted and became employees?
What is the time to fill the open positions?
What is the time between each step?
What percentage of candidates are diversity candidates?
Some companies will measure how many of these new employees are retained – and for how long.

Is Talent Attraction A Team Effort?

When setting a goal properly, a person should examine the whole process and focus on metrics that will determine the success of reaching a goal. For instance, in many companies, the sole focus for their recruiting metrics is on one individual recruiting for that position. Would it be a great idea to measure every person’s efforts in the process?

The Hiring Manager – on one of my recruiting contracts, the company consistently had over 400 aging openings. They brought me in to help cut those openings to a manageable level. In my consulting effort, I discovered there was no metric for Hiring Manager response to a Recruiter’s introduction to a candidate. The Hiring Managers, knowing they were not measured, lobbed the “They do not give me the right candidates…” grenade at HR. After introducing 25 potential candidates over 3 weeks, and not receiving a response from my emails or calls, I unexpectedly dropped by the Hiring Manager’s office. I asked him if we could spend a few minutes reviewing the resumes. This way I could better focus on the right skills and experience to give him better candidates. Finally, the truth came out. He was not interested in filling his position right now. He did not want to close the open requisition because “it was too hard to open a new requisition.”
When there is a problem, it generally goes deeper than one level. The same client hired a recruiting firm, not mine, to conduct reference checks. We identified, interviewed, and wished to extend an offer to a top talented candidate with the Exact Experience the Hiring Manager required. Everyone was excited! Well not everyone…For some reason, the recruiting firm doing the references could not get the reference checks completed. After several days, I contacted them daily for an update – nothing. After 10 days and not a single reference check conducted, we lost the candidate to a competitor. Sadly, there was no metric for them to conduct the reference checks.

My recommendation to my clients is to include everyone who has a role in the hiring process in their metrics. You can see from those two stories this is a team effort. Everyone needs to be engaged in Talent Attraction – and measured in their progress to recruit, interview, select, offer (including due diligence), onboarding, and retaining top talent.

Simply measure their results. If their results do not meet expectations, it is time to discuss results and expectations with them.

One of my clients was MCI Telecommunications. They had a dynamic culture – and wanted to keep it that way. If a manager had an opening, but did not respond to their recruiter, they would lose the new employee requisition within 6 months. Once that happened to a few Hiring Managers, you can believe the other managers heard and were more diligent when the recruiter came calling with qualified candidates.

The other problem with a vague job description is everyone is qualified. Therefore, the Hiring Managers cannot complain the candidates were not qualified. Funny how actions can come back and bite you in the rear area.

What Is Next?

To improve your Talent Attraction results, your company needs to change some actions to improve. Doing the same things and expecting different results is called…well, you know.

Add several metrics to your recruiting metrics to ensure all parties are engaged.

Next week, we will discuss the Importance of Accurate Job Descriptions!

My skills will help your company improve your Talent Attraction processes. Top Talent will increase company Productivity and Profitability!

I help organizations Recruit, Onboard, Actuate, and Retain Top Talent.

Bill Humbert is available for Speaking, Talent Attraction Consulting, and Training contracts.

RecruiterGuy@msn.com 435-714-4425

https://www.espeakers.com/marketplace/speaker/profile/23767/Bill-Humbert

USA 01-435-714-4425 Bill@RecruiterGuy.com

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