The One Recruiting Metric We All Overlook

I just read an interesting article on recruiting metrics and it made me wonder all the things I should have measured in my young and impetuous sourcing/recruiting youth. As a matter of fact, if I could’ve snapped a finger and have certain metrics back in the day (and the will to leverage them), I would’ve been the most productive recruiter (or sourcer) who ever lived.

Metrics like…

1. How many leads did the sourcer find?
2. How many leads did the sourcer deem qualified, interested and available?
3. How many leads did the recruiter accept?
4. How many leads did the recruiter follow-up on?
5. How many leads had a second interview?
6. How many leads were hired?
7. How long did it take to make first contact with a lead that was ruled qualified, interested and available?
8. How long did it take to tell each contact that they were no longer being considered for the role?
9. How many alternative jobs were they being considered for?
10. What were the reasons why they were not hired?
11. What specific companies did we hire from the most?
12. What industries, outside of our own, did we hire from the most?
13. Which managers hired the most in the past year?
14. Which managers hired the quickest in the past year?
15. Which managers hired the slowest in the past year?
16. What is the typical profile of the candidates hired by each hiring manager? (To include: schools attended, professional experience and size of company)
17. Which managers retain the most staff?
18. Which managers lose the most staff?
19. Which managers review the most resumes and offer immediate feedback?
20. What skills are needed to meet the next business initiative?
21. What skills are presently available to meet present and future needs?

If I had the answer to those questions, I would know…

1. How much quantity the sourcer can produce
2. How well the sourcer can engage passive candidates
3. How much quality the sourcer can produce
4. How well the recruiter can manage his desk
5. How much quality the sourcer can produce
6. How in-sync the recruiter and sourcer are
7. How well the recruiting process is working
8. How important candidate engagement is to the company
9. How resourceful the recruiter and sourcer are
10. What about our company needs to change to appeal to more candidates
11. Which companies should we be targeting
12. Which companies should we be paying more attention to
13. Which managers I should give the most attention to
14. Which managers I should give the most attention to
15. Which managers I would connect with to pipeline talent for future reference
16. Which passive candidates would be most appealing to whom
17. Which managers know their needs the best
18. Which managers to avoid
19. Which managers to give surprise gifts to (wink)
20. What skills to pipeline for
21. What skills to pipeline for

From all of that data, I would also know…

1. My stats as a sourcer (for example: 50 leads sourced > 12 qualified, interested and available > 10 accepted by recruiter > 1 hire)
2. My stats as a recruiter (for example: 10 qualified, interested and available leads > 8 Interviews > 1 hire)
3. Which of my fellow sourcers are best at finding a certain profile
4. Which of my fellow recruiters are best at closing leads they have accepted
5. As a manager, I know which sourcing projects to assign to whom
6. As a manager, I would know how to predict when jobs would be filled

And yet, with all of this information one measure has been overlooked – retention. Shouldn’t how long a person stays with a company be the ultimate test of a recruiter? To put it another way, isn’t it better to judge a matchmaker by the number of divorces that have resulted from their handiwork vs the marriages they have influenced? Wouldn’t you think that a matchmaker with 50 marriages and 1 divorce to their credit is better than a matchmaker with 75 marriages and 33 divorces accredited to them? With this in mind, in a perfect world, I would probably add a few more metrics to my overall recruiting process.

In order to rate our recruiting organization overall, I would ask:
# How many people did our recruiting org hire in the past year?
# Of the people our recruiting org hired, how many are still with the company?

In order to rate the hiring managers overall, I would ask:
# Which office locations retain their staff the longest?
# Which managers retain their staff the longest?

My guess is that these types of stats would work anywhere in the world in order to measure the effectiveness of recruiter and sourcer alike. But, I could be wrong. What do you think? Leave your comments below. 🙂

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One thought on “The One Recruiting Metric We All Overlook”

  1. Hi Jim,

    I think you’re spot on. Retention is indeed a key indicator of performance.

    Sadly/ironically, I don’t think it is a key indicator for most service providers for now.

    Yet, I’m convinced the likes of us will have to advertise our roles with factual information in a very near future and I don’t thinks clients are interested in how we performed last year (i.e. how many recruitments we performed and how much we cashed in)..

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