With a new year comes a fresh start to how you track and measure success in your recruitment and talent acquisition efforts.
Now is a great time to re-evaluate your metrics. Almost one-third of executives want to see reports from their HR teams more often, according to a survey by BambooHR. While there are many valuable metrics to track, here are a few we recommend starting with.
Submission to interview ratio
This looks at how many candidates that are presented by recruiters to hiring managers are actually being selected for interviews. This metric provides good insight into whether or not the recruiters and hiring managers are truly aligned, or whether a re-calibration is required. A low submission to interview ratio could also suggest that what a hiring manager is looking for is not available in the market, and they may need to compromise on their must-haves.
Time to fill
This measures the number of days it takes to fill an open position, from the date a job is posted to when a new hire accepts the role. From tracking time to fill, you can determine patterns with length of time that positions are open depending on their different teams, and see gaps in your processes.
One of the biggest mistakes we’re seeing with companies today is an application process that’s too long. If you have multiple rounds of interviews and have a long, tedious application process, you’re losing candidates. To shorten your application process and time to fill for roles, consider investing in recruitment technology to automate processes like scheduling.
Time to submission
Similar to time to fill, this is an efficiency metric. What it looks at is how quickly a recruiter is able to turn around candidates for a hiring manager after an intake meeting has taken place. This metric can be used in conjunction with others to determine what is or isn’t working with an interview process.
For example, a low time to submission metric coupled with a high submission to interview ratio suggests that you’ve got an awesome recruiter that has a strong understanding of what the hiring manager is looking for, as well as what the hiring manager is looking for being readily available in the market. On the other hand, a low time to submission ratio, and a long time to fill could suggest that things outside of the recruiter’s control are contributing to a lengthy process (i.e. too many rounds of interview, interviewers taking too long to deliver feedback, indecisive hiring managers, etc).
Acceptance rate
Offer acceptance rate shows what percentage of candidates accepted your job offer which helps determine how attractive and competitive your job offers are.
Today we’re in a candidate-driven market and we’re seeing more counter offers than ever before. Accepting a counteroffer, in most cases, is actually a step backward for your career. We work with candidates who are often struggling with this decision so we gathered advice from our recruiters on why not to accept a counteroffer.
If you’re seeing an increase in counter offers with candidates, that’s another good metric to track that will affect your offer acceptance rate as well.
Cost per hire
Your average cost per hire is the total amount you spend on recruitment annually divided by the total number of hires you made that year. This includes internal costs like in-house TA teams and time spent by hiring managers, and external costs like agencies, job board postings, and employer brand activities.
By tracking your cost per hire, it can help you determine the value of bringing on an external recruitment agency to act as a partner for long-term recruiting needs.
Focus on quality over quantity
At ML6, we strongly believe in hiring people, not resumes; personalities, not c checklists. When we work with our partners, we emphasize the importance of focusing on quality of applications and candidates, over quantity. This is harder to measure but an important distinction in how we work.
When hiring for your team, it can be tempting to focus on a certain number of years of experience, from a specific background, with a targeted designation. However, we often find that relaxing the focus and casting a broader net into the job market has resulted in better long-term hires. Stepping away from that checklist of experience allows hiring managers and recruiters to instead focus on future potential.
To evaluate the quality of candidates, you can consider factors like if they’ve received counter offers, length of time on the job market, and how they fit your candidate persona profiles. Measuring quality of hires can include turnover metrics, job performance, and employee engagement rates.
Again, our main philosophy is hiring people over resumes, which is why we don’t measure success by number of resumes or applications. We’re interested in helping companies find the best people, and candidates find the best next job for them based on what they enjoy working on, and how they work.
As the recruitment and talent acquisition world is continuously evolving, so will your work and what you’re tracking. Your approach to collecting and analyzing HR and TA metrics should never stay stagnant, and it’s important to keep iterating and experimenting along the way.
We’re here to help! If you’re looking for additional support with streamlining your processes, tracking your TA metrics, or hiring, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
About ML6
ML6 is a recruitment and talent advisory firm located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We provide customized solutions to support our clients throughout the employee lifecycle. We help our clients attract and retain talent by advising on people programs, processes, and best practices.
