It can appear to be an impossible task to curate data and metrics and analyze whether your company’s recruitment efforts are on track. Easily sourcing and analyzing the relevant, valuable metrics is the key to identifying gaps in your process and streamlining recruitment – vital in a highly-competitive job market.
The task is broken down into three simple steps. These three steps will help you create a metrics culture and mindset and develop a recruitment powerhouse.
Adopt the Recruitment Metrics Mindset
The first step is a decision to adopt a metrics mindset. As a leader of your team, you must make the decision to view every piece of the data puzzle as a piece of the bigger whole. It is important to keep the big picture in mind, rather than focusing on single transactions or falling back to older, slow, and less effective methodologies. Once you step back and look at your overall performance metrics, you can pinpoint inefficiencies accurately to assist in making improvements in the process. Viewing the full scope of the metrics will also enable you to see the shifts and variations that occur at different times of the year in order to adjust recruitment and business cycles.
Outline the Recruiting Metrics to Track
The second step is to identify the metrics that are most important to understanding and adjusting your recruitment process. Not all metrics contribute to an enhanced, streamlined recruitment process. Identify and define the metrics from the available data that will give you the most insight into your recruitment process. These following five recruiting metrics provide a jumping-off point:
Source of Hire/Job Board Performance
It’s important to try different methods of sourcing candidates – whether it’s multiple job boards, social media, or referrals. Outline this metric to track which boards or social media platforms are delivering the best performance.
Job Optimizing Metrics
Outline how you can track metrics around your job posts and keywords. Google Analytics is a great tool for researching what keywords to make sure are included in your job posts.
Time to Hire
Tracking time to hire metrics across all job categories from executives and management to hourly roles is imperative to planning and time allocation for your hiring managers.
Interview to Offer Conversion Rates
Sourcing candidates is only the beginning. Tracking the conversion rate from interview to offer and offer acceptance can give you insights into where improvements can be made to your recruiting process.
Tools to Implement the Recruiting Metrics Mindset
The third step in creating a metrics culture in your organization is to research, source, and adopt tools and technology to implement the tracking and understanding of metrics. You can start by looking at the range of tools already in use in the recruitment process in your organization. Reach out to accounting and other departments for data and research tools that can be accessed for analysis.
Once you have sourced and implemented the tools and technology to track the metrics, gain more insight from periodical reports to increase both the efficiency and overall efficacy of the recruiting process within your organization.
Though the initial first step into creating a metrics mindset and culture in your organization may appear intimidating, the three main steps of adopting, identifying, and implementing metrics into your company culture will help you move toward developing a standard process and structure to streamline your recruitment process.
As the process becomes more efficient, adopting a metrics mindset requires time and effort in the initial stages, but once the data analysis process is in place and the necessary changes made, the entire recruitment process becomes more effective, faster, freeing up HR department time.
Michelle Lanter Smith is the Chief Marketing Officer of EPAY Systems, where she oversees the company’s go-to-market strategy, customer success and technical support operations. Michelle brings 20+ years of leadership experience in driving revenue growth for high tech and service-driven firms. She graduated summa cum laude from Marquette University, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. She holds a Masters of Business Administration with distinction from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.