METRICS - Recruiting Talent in 2020

INTRODUCTION

Human Resources has traditionally been a transactional operation, generally focusing on short-term objectives to fill a critical need for the business. Lately, there’s been a growing demand for HR leaders to gain a “seat at the table” in order to play a more crucial and strategic role.

Over recent years with $Billions of capital being invested into the NewSpace and SATCOM sector, companies are having to be a lot more strategic with their approach to talent attraction. With so much competition in the market, companies must work extremely hard to attract and retain superstar employees.

It’s essential that any company that wants to be successful, puts key metrics in place to monitor their recruitment process. As a business you need to know that what you are doing today will support tomorrows business objectives and help take the company forward. This will only work if ‘everyone’ is on-board and aware of the relevant processes in place. As a HR leader, you are one of the most valuable assets of the company and play a critical role in the company’s success or failure.

Here are five key metrics

1. TIME TO HIRE

Time to hire is an indicator that determines recruitment efficiency, as well as recruitment forecasting. If you know your recruitment process is too long winded then you need to work out why this is the case and how you can be more effective of your time.

The more streamlined your recruitment process is, the better it will become. Every person in the company needs to be singing of the same hymn sheet. This comes direct from the HR leaders in the business and making everyone aware of the company’s recruitment procedure, and the implications of what will happen if it's not adhered too.

From the time of the first interview through to candidate acceptance, it should really not take any more than two to four weeks, especially when the very best talent in the market that you are trying to secure is also being approached by your competitors.

2. SOURCE TO CLOSE

Source to close is how quickly you close candidates once they enter your interview pipeline. This removes the sourcing phase from the equation and evaluates the efficiency of your company’s hiring process.

Your goal should be to make evidence-based decisions on a candidate as quickly as possible. As a result, source to close becomes indicative of how well the company’s interview process is able to collect meaningful and relevant information at each stage.

If you are taking months to interview candidates and are losing candidates in the process, then you need to evaluate your interview process. Having long interview processes is extremely damaging to your business and your brand.

As a HR leader, you need to find out where in the business the interview process is slowing down, is it with senior management not being available, is it because you’re not ready to hire someone so no urgency from hiring managers, is it because you think good candidates will always be available and want to work for your organisation?

Every company has to remember, it’s a candidate driven market, candidates can be picky and choosy about who they want to work for however if they do not have an enjoyable recruitment experience then even the most fussiest of candidates can be turned off by your organisation.

You want to strike while the iron is hot with a candidate, after the first interview, keep in constant contact, let them know the next steps of the recruitment process, let them know the time frame and stick to that, the quicker the turnaround, the better. If a candidates’ interview keeps being rescheduled or delayed, you are effectively pushing that candidate away and giving them reasons not to join.

3. CONVERSATION RATES

Track conversation rates which allows your internal recruiters to monitor when candidates are dropping out and why. A structured interview process allows recruiters to measure conversion rates at each stage in the recruiting funnel. Monitoring stage conversion rates allows your talent team to identify where candidates are dropping out, and why.

Why are these candidates dropping out at a certain stage, is it due to a particular hiring manager, is it because your interview process is too tough i.e. are you asking them to complete tough assignments or presentations?

For the candidates that are dropping out, have a look at who these candidates previously worked for, are they well established players in the market, do they have excellent references to back up their experience. If they have strong backgrounds but are not making it through your recruitment process at a certain stage, then maybe you need re-evaluate what you are doing at that stage of the interview process and whether it’s really necessary.

4. SOURCE QUALITY

Source quality allows you to monitor which source your candidates are coming from, how far they get in the process and which source is the most successful. The mindset should be the quality of candidate coming from your source and not the quantity.

Instead of simply measuring the number of candidates a source provides, you must also measure how far candidates from a particular source get in the interview process. So, for example, if you looked at just 5 vacancies you sourced last year you could have the following……….(numbers as an example).

4.1  Direct application through company website – 60 applicants, 3 stage 1, 0 stage 2.

4.2  Advertisement placed online, newspaper etc.. - 30 applicants, 3 stage 1, 1 stage 2.

4.3  Referrals – 6 applicants, 6 stage 1, 4 stage 2, 2 placed.

4.4  Search firm – 15 applicants, 12 stage 1, 9 stage 2, 3 placed.

5. QUALITY OF HIRE

Companies should consider the monetary value a high-performing employee contributes to the organisation. Calculating Employee Lifetime Value (ELV) links recruiting to performance metrics and drives strategies to improve talent acquisition efforts.

Cost Per Hire is a common performance indicator of a recruiting operation however companies often seek to reduce the cost, rather than improve the Quality of Hire. Companies should consider the monetary value a high-performing employee contributes to the organization. Beyond avoiding the cost of a mis-hire, hiring top talent has a measurable impact on your company’s revenues because of a significant performance differential.

So if your company is really serious about attracting the best talent in the market then you must allow a healthy recruitment budget in order to do achieve this. The quickest way of driving your business forward is hiring top-performing employees through talent attraction.

CONCLUSION

Recruiting KPIs are constantly evolving as talent teams become more strategic and integrated into an organization. High-growth companies are using data to optimize the recruiting process in order to improve their quality of hire.

In order to be a business partner at your organization, you must begin by measuring the right things. Make sure your applicant tracking system is equipped with the reports you need to measure these KPIs. Having meaningful data at your disposal will allow you to make smart, evidence-driven decisions on where to spend company resources and how to make the best hires.

ABOUT US

Sapienza has been supplying manpower into the Space and SATCOM sector for 25 years and our team of experts are handling high-volume recruitment on a daily basis for many of our high-profile customers throughout the world.

If you really want to streamline your recruitment in 2020, why not reach out to one of our team and ask about our RPO Managed Services. You can outsource your recruitment to Sapienza for a period of 6 or 12 months and our team of recruitment experts will take care of everything. We will put recruitment procedures in place, attract the very best talent on behalf of your organisation and scale your business within the shortest time frames possible.

For more information on our RPO Managed Services or anything else related to this article then you can contact me directly on ian.stammers@sapienzaconsulting.com