Are you tracking the right recruitment metrics?

Using metrics to gauge how well recruitment is going can greatly fine-tune the process – eliminating bottlenecks, keeping costs down and finding the best people. But, in line with the strategic direction of the business, HR recruitment also needs to measure how it’s filling the talent gap. If talent isn’t arriving, measuring how efficient you are won’t help.

The reality is that HR recruitment still spends too much time measuring fulfilment rates at the expense of tracking its delivery of talent landscape goals.

What skills will your business need to remain competitive? Which of these do you already have and what will you need in two years’ time? Do you have a plan to get those skills? If you have a development programme, how many people would that produce? How many will universities yield? Where are you going to get the rest? Can you import them?

Beyond the baseline

If recruitment’s job is to optimally provide resource for the business so it can achieve its sales goals, then the real metric should be: How far are we from all seats filled?

As a recruitment team, you should work towards a target set against this variance rate – how long does it take to supply a needed candidate and can you keep up?

Building a workforce isn’t solely recruitment’s responsibility. Management needs to understand what skills it’ll need and forecast them for the year. It also needs to know that the way it runs the business could impact HR’s ability to fill seats, if there’s a lot of churn. The best is for recruitment, together with management, to take a joint approach in filling all seats.

What metrics matter

Team management is still very important. Look at the best route to deliver on the service agreement with the business for the average time needed to supply a new candidate. As a recruitment manager you can then measure your team against set targets.

While there are standard key performance indicators, your chosen metrics will entirely depend on your circumstances. But generally, you could look at:

1. Time to fill. What’s the speed and efficiency of hiring? E.g. candidate communication – how long do applications stay in an unprocessed state; and how long does it take recruiters to get back to candidates?
2. Cost per hire. Are we keeping within budget? Divide the total hiring costs (advertising, assessment and interview time) by the number of people hired in each period.
3. The quality of hires. Are new recruits fitting in well? Ask the line manager, look at pass rates on training programmes, targets based on sales, or the results of staff surveys.

A better way to measure

In Greek mythology the figure Sisyphus was punished for his misdeeds by having to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again, repeating this action for eternity.

Similarly, working through applications manually and capturing details for number crunching is an exercise in futility. Recruitment software can automate manual processes and give you real-time dashboards for measurement. Centralising all recruitment information further boosts productivity and save costs.

Recruitment software makes it easy to monitor fulfilment rates, even per recruiter, and present reports to the Department of Labour on your employment equity status. But the technology can also help you proactively recruit the talent your business needs.

Charting your course

Think about what you need to recruit for the year ahead. How many people, at what level, which channels would work best, and what budget would you need? Look at retention rates for the past few years and add a percentage for churn. Look at internal pipelines if talent isn’t that easy to find. Then go to market and set the metrics to track.

By identifying your business’ future talent needs and getting started with recruiting ahead of time, the required candidates will be there in your pipeline when it becomes time to fill roles.

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