Companies use various recruitment metrics to effectively measure the success and failure rates of their hiring processes. Essentially, this entails analyzing every aspect of your hiring process, regardless of how miniscule a role it plays, with the intent of determining its overall effect on the process as a whole. Every aspect of your hiring process has a definite purpose and reflects your company values at least to some degree. With that in mind, it’s important and highly beneficial for companies to spend as much time as possible crafting foolproof and well-structured hiring processes that attract the most desirable candidates in their field. A sure-fire method of executing this is to gain a full understanding of how each aspect of your hiring process works, how successful they are, and then making the necessary improvements.
What Are Recruitment Metrics and Why Are They So Important?
Think of your hiring process as a complex mechanism with a lot of moving parts. There are the parts that you can actively control such as creating and posting jobs online, opening up new positions, and seeking out qualified candidates. Then, there are the parts that are out of your control (or so you think) like predicting the best method of attracting qualified candidates, attracting top-performing candidates to your company, and compelling jobseekers to create employment profiles on your web site. The reality is that you have the power to control all of these factors and so much more!
Analyzing recruitment metrics such as the cost of conducting interviews, the cost of hiring, employment retention (turnaround) rates, and even the methods used to obtain the attention of your most desirable candidates gives you a thorough insight into which aspects of your recruitment strategies are the most effective. This insight is crucial for improving your tactics and maximizing on the ones that have the potential for the highest long-term success rates.
Hiring Metrics That Are Proven to Improve Your Recruitment Strategies
Just like every other endeavour you’ve ever taken on in your life, when it comes to recruiting the top candidates to work for your company, knowledge is power. It might sound like a meaningless adage or cliché, but in the business world, the more you know the more you can get and the more you can stay ahead of your competition.
Today’s job market isn’t only highly competitive for jobseekers; the same can also be said for recruitment agents and hiring managers as well. Finding the right candidates that fit most of the requirements you’re looking for and can assimilate to your company culture is challenging.
Employing the following stringent hiring metrics can help you pinpoint exactly where and how you need to implement necessary improvements to your process.
Measure Candidate Sourcing
Oftentimes, companies ask prospective job candidates to offer valuable feedback about their application experience. Part of obtaining this feedback includes finding out how each candidate found out about your company and the positions for which you’re hiring. This information is useful in helping you narrow down your most successful candidate networks so that you can focus more on those platforms and optimize your visibility in those areas. This also offers a tremendous insight into the quality and suitability of the candidates you’re sourcing from these areas.
Candidate Experience
In this instance, candidate experience doesn’t refer to the level of skill, knowledge, or capabilities a candidate brings to the table – although, all of that is still highly important and shouldn’t be undermined. Rather, it has to do with how potential candidates perceive your company after going through your hiring and application process. Are candidates having a positive or negative experience while applying for a job at your company? Is the process far too complex, demanding, or time-consuming? These are all factors that you should take into consideration before submitting job postings on your web site and other employment platforms. Performing beta tests and going through the application process yourself along with obtaining feedback from previous applicants is an excellent way to learn the errors of your ways and make the process more efficient.
Talent Quality
Another important metric is to measure the quality of the talent you’re seeking against the quantity. When it comes to hiring talented employees, quality always trumps quantity. One highly qualified and motivated employee who has a strong passion for your industry and your business is far more valuable than a group of employees who are simply there to make more money. Evaluating the priorities and work ethic of all of your existing and potential employees will help you realize who is most interested in helping your company reach higher levels of success than even you could have ever imagined.
Applicant Conversion Rates
Tracking applicant conversion rates can help you determine how many candidates start the application process; how many people quit halfway through; when the highest abandonment rates are occurring; and how many people actually complete the process. This is important because it highlights the most problematic aspect of your application process. If you have extremely low conversion rates, then examining this metric will help you determine exactly where you went wrong and offer solutions on how to fix the problem.
Employee Acquisition vs. Retention
Recruitment rates demonstrate the rate at which you’ve successfully acquired new candidates. Throughout the process, you have the option of asking for their opinions and satisfaction rate with the application practice.
Retention rates, on the other hand, have to do with how well and how long you’re able to keep your employees. Bear in mind that some employees might simply see the position you’re offering as a mere stepping stone to bigger and better opportunities in the future and this could affect your metrics.
How Resolve Recruit Inc. Can Help
As one of the top recruitment agencies in Canada, Resolve Recruit Inc. can offer hiring managers expert advice and insight on how to attract the right jobseekers to your company. Based in Mississauga, Ontario, we have a thorough understanding of the Canadian job market and the challenges facing hiring managers today. To learn more about how we can help you attract, hire, and retain the highest quality candidates for your company, please contact us!
