How does a business measure recruitment success?

‘4 Recruitment Rights to Avoid a Left’ Strategy to achieving effective recruitment analytics.

Those not directly involved in the world of recruitment and talent acquisition will often view it as a being a bit like a giant supermarket of people and jobs. Go to the right department and grab the job, match it with a person from another aisle. The reality is quite different, and I would prefer to compare it to stockbroking. It is wildly diverse and quite often moves at the speed of light. Success or failure can take place in the blink of an eye.

So, given that fact, how do businesses or recruiters quantify their success? There are multiple metrics used to measure the success of a given recruitment process. However, only very rarely in the volatile and diverse environment of recruitment does a single metric tell the complete story.

Successful talent acquisition requires an analysis of a combination of parameters to ascertain if a hiring process was or is a success. Significantly, we need to agree that stating that a process was a success or a failure is simply too generic. Instead, we need to assess and measure its success actively.

Determining success can be achieved by using and analysing multiple talent acquisition metrics. There are five key metrics to consider which I call “4 Recruitment Rights to avoid a Left”:

• Right Person?
• Right Role?
• Right Time?
• Right Price?
• Left Tenure?

We very often focus our attention on what CAN be measured and fail to see that not everything SHOULD be measured. Additionally, we don’t always appreciate that the way we quantify or analyse those measurements can change, just as every aspect of recruitment is subject to rapid-fire changes.

Recruitment is a fluid and fast process and subsequently subject to changing very quickly. Multiple parameters should be reviewed, and ideally, if all metrics are working in harmony, they can tell us if we have done our job well. The six parameters I would recommend utilising to give you the most robust information (when viewed as a group) for you to assess whether your hiring processes are efficient and fruitful are these:

1. Retention Rates (how long the new hire stays with the company):
The retention metric analyses how many resignations and involuntary turnovers a business has had. How many people stayed with the company for less than three months? If you’re hiring people who leave the company within the first 90 days, it’s most likely that the company has not experienced a real return on investment (ROI). It is costly to recruit, engage, on-board and train new starters to do the job for which they were hired. Whether they resigned or involuntarily dismissed, the reality is that it was the wrong person for the job or you as the recruiter miss-sold the opportunity. The number of times this happens will dictate whether you are hiring the right people or not. They may also highlight potential areas for improvement within your recruitment process.

2. The overall time it takes to hire:
While this is a metric that is sometimes overused or used incorrectly, it is one that should be measured. A quick hire isn’t always the best hire, but conversely, the longer that you wait to on-board a candidate, the costlier the hire will be. If a candidate waits for a considerable time for an offer to come, quite often they will remove themselves from the running or be recruited by other companies, and you’ll be left with the least viable candidates. This can be costly in many ways since the most desirable candidates may be out of the running; it could cause you to lower your recruitment standards and hire someone less suitable and more than likely it will take your business longer to recruit – all of which are issues that will cost your company time and money.

3. The cost of hiring:
The actual cost of hiring has been traditionally quite difficult to pinpoint. Are you analysing costs regarding financials or time (or both)? Has the applicant added value to the business? The cost of hiring is, therefore, a metric that is only helpful or applicable when considered alongside other metrics such as retention rates and value and is not easy to determine when assessed singularly.

4. Hiring Manager Satisfaction:
Most hiring managers say that internal recruiters have a low to moderate understanding of the jobs for which they recruit. This is fair enough as typically they will be required to recruit for many different roles across multiple specialist areas and it is impossible to be an expert in every industry. Therefore, internal recruiters will often engage with specialist agencies such as ourselves (JGA Recruitment). If they don’t then hiring managers may report not always being happy with the calibre of candidates sent. Sending out surveys to the hiring managers and asking for their input on the job that you do is a great way to track how successful your candidates were. With new technologies, available that allow hiring managers to answer surveys quickly and easily electronically, they are now more likely to respond and give you the information that you need to learn from each hire.

5. Value the hire adds to the business (post-placement):
How well does the employee fit in and what value have they added to the company since joining? The hiring manager can tell you the answer to that and will do in your surveys. If the hire has added enormous value, saved time or costs, improved efficiency, or enhanced customer service then these are tangible and measurable benefits realised by the company and will help validate the hire for you and your client.

6. Increasing market share or reducing the strength of a competitor (by hiring their talent):
Did you hire away talent or a good employee from one of your competitors? If so this can dramatically increase the value of your company and your market share while lowering the strength and the value of the other. This is an excellent metric to use when determining if your hire was successful and added good value to the company or not.

There are many other metrics used to determine the value and the quality of a hire as well as those listed above. There is not, contrary to belief, one metric that will provide you with an ultimate overview of the value of a recruit. If there is one that speaks more loudly than the others, it is quite likely to be the longevity retention rate metric, which not only defines how satisfied the employee is but also how happy the hiring manager and other staff are with the recruit. That said, with so much changing so quickly in the employment scene, it truly takes multiple types of data and careful analysis to determine whether or not your hire is “valuable” and therefore “successful”. Use every metric you can find that is relevant to your particular hire to evaluate how well you’ve done your job and continue learning and growing to keep building on your methods.

If you have a niche payroll, HR, Reward or Marketing vacancy that requires assistance, why not consider engaging JGA Recruitment to help with your recruitment process. Contact us at [email protected] or call 01727 800 377 and speak to a specialist today.

• How have you historically measured recruitment success?
• Have you learned anything from this article – please share?
• Which matric do you think is most important when measuring recruitment success?

Please share and comment – I will try to interact with as many as possible!

This article was written by Nick Day, Managing Director at JGA Recruitment – the leading Payroll, HR & Reward Recruitment Specialists.

If you are looking for expert talent in the fields of Payroll, HR or Reward, then please reach out for a 15 minute ignition call and I would be delighted to discuss how we can help.
Nick Day
Managing Director
James Gray Associates Ltd
Payroll, HR & Reward Specialist Recruiters
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 01727 800 377