Save Recruitment Dollars with increasing your Candidate's Experiences

I have to make a confession. I often get so busy with my reqs, my candidates, and my interviews, that things I learned early on in recruitment and HR have slipped. Last week I took a breath and tried to put a framework together so that I could mentor others around my success in candidate experience and relationship building. I knew I was strong in a couple of areas, but I had never connected my enjoyment of building relationships and creating an experience for all my stakeholder, with the Cost for Hire.

Like all you out there that need evidence of success, or are numbers driven I pulled out my Metrics. I looked at applicant to candidate, applicant communication, applicant resume review, hiring manager review, resume to interview, resume to screen and interview to hire ratios but nothing was more revealing than the relationship of two unique groups. Cost of Hire, and Candidacy Experience rates.

I recently started to track the experience of my candidates. My corporation doesn't do candidate surveys and I always thought them valuable to my own improvement. Therefore, I started sending a bit of a follow up survey, and email to all candidates (those I declined, and those I hired). I know we can't please all the candidates, applicants, and hiring managers all the time, so I waited with a slight nervousness.

However I was pleasantly surprised to gain a response rate of 98 out of 100 survey's sent, and great positive feedback. I also got a sleugh of resumes, of people the candidates thought might be a better fit. Those resumes saved me sourcing time, agency fees, and above all else opportunity. I also realized when my ability to consistently provide a great candidate experience dipped (ie,m a new hiring team didn't get my plug or i didn't get to do the customary pre=build, etc) cost of hire increased, and time to offer accept increased.

On the Great Benefit and cost reduction side--Pipeline Grew, and Referral Rates skyrocketed (not necessarily for my particular roles but for the team):

Some solid evidence:

What I noticed was a giant pile of Thank you's. Within those Thank yous, I recognized a pattern. Most of the Applicants and Candidates, had never previously been able to give feedback on their complete process. Also, very few had developed a relationship with their corporate recruiter. Some had experiences with Agencies, others only with Corporate HR and none that could remember a name or a company process. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

My favorite collection of hard copy facts was a huge pile of pre-qualified resumes with a note, of what the person was strong in, why it was relevant to the job (remember these are from candidates we declined), and a great contact database of names, companies, talent, resumes, and sourcing avenues that I would never had entrance into previously. Now if I only can make this systematic, and influence my managers to incorporate this into our design.....think of the success! I'm so excited I had to share the joy. This is why I started my short story with sometimes its those things in the beginning that stick with us. My first year of recruitment my clients recognized that I had a great way of creating an employment experience that was mutually beneficial with Hiring Managers and Candidates. The clients (I was a consultant), also recognized the dollars I spent were often less, and under budget, than my peers. If I had only made the connection back then.....

Summary: I'm convinced a positive Candidate Experience can increase quality of hire, retention and decrease effort and decrease sourcing dollars. Ultimately it can impact a positive brand, however, it takes more than one recruiter to influence it. Anyone else in??????

Comment by Rob Wetzel on September 16, 2008 at 10:20pm: Metrics are a very important part of recruiting. They should always be part of your dashboard so you know exactly where you stand regarding your performance. There are various circumstances that affect numbers, but metrics when viewed over a period of time don't lie. They can shed new light in areas that are not working as well as areas that are running on all 8 cylinders. Since I manage recruiting in a corporate environment, I'm more interested in days to fill, phone screens per interviews, interviews per hires, cost per hire (which can be calculated in many ways), and hiring manager feedback.

There are many other metrics that are used to track recruiting performance which work well for different environments. One key area of metrics is understanding what your are measuring and that you have the correct process of inputting data to pull from. Many times I have seen reports that don't really reflect a true picture. Example: Days to fill. Many people count the days from the time the req was created until the time the req is closed. This is ok, but it usually gives a false impression. What I mean is, a req could be opened one day and then put on hold by the hiring manager or by the business for a week or even a month or two. I don't want those days counting against actual recruiting days. I have filters put in our system so the days are only counting when the req is in an open status. I want to know how long my recruiter is really spending time on a req. This way I can see that recruiting worked on a req for 16 days and the reqs total durations was 64 days. This alerts me that there were circumstances outside recruitings control. It also makes me aware to dig deeper in case it is brought up within management why it took so long to fill this req.

Many times, senior management doesn't get the full story. I run some back reports that reflect how long a manager takes to respond on a received resume that my recruiters have already screened. This also impacts the days to fill metric if you have managers that are not quick in responding. All of this information helps to paint a picture so you can understand your metrics better as well as where you can help to improve the overall ROI across the board. That's why I'm a very big promotor when it comes to metrics.

Comment by Rob Wetzel on September 16, 2008 at 10:20pm: Metrics are a very important part of recruiting. They should always be part of your dashboard so you know exactly where you stand regarding your performance. There are various circumstances that affect numbers, but metrics when viewed over a period of time don't lie. They can shed new light in areas that are not working as well as areas that are running on all 8 cylinders. Since I manage recruiting in a corporate environment, I'm more interested in days to fill, phone screens per interviews, interviews per hires, cost per hire (which can be calculated in many ways), and hiring manager feedback.

There are many other metrics that are used to track recruiting performance which work well for different environments. One key area of metrics is understanding what your are measuring and that you have the correct process of inputting data to pull from. Many times I have seen reports that don't really reflect a true picture. Example: Days to fill. Many people count the days from the time the req was created until the time the req is closed. This is ok, but it usually gives a false impression. What I mean is, a req could be opened one day and then put on hold by the hiring manager or by the business for a week or even a month or two. I don't want those days counting against actual recruiting days. I have filters put in our system so the days are only counting when the req is in an open status. I want to know how long my recruiter is really spending time on a req. This way I can see that recruiting worked on a req for 16 days and the reqs total durations was 64 days. This alerts me that there were circumstances outside recruitings control. It also makes me aware to dig deeper in case it is brought up within management why it took so long to fill this req.

Many times, senior management doesn't get the full story. I run some back reports that reflect how long a manager takes to respond on a received resume that my recruiters have already screened. This also impacts the days to fill metric if you have managers that are not quick in responding. All of this information helps to paint a picture so you can understand your metrics better as well as where you can help to improve the overall ROI across the board. That's why I'm a very big promotor when it comes to metrics.

Comment by Rob Wetzel on September 16, 2008 at 10:20pm: Metrics are a very important part of recruiting. They should always be part of your dashboard so you know exactly where you stand regarding your performance. There are various circumstances that affect numbers, but metrics when viewed over a period of time don't lie. They can shed new light in areas that are not working as well as areas that are running on all 8 cylinders. Since I manage recruiting in a corporate environment, I'm more interested in days to fill, phone screens per interviews, interviews per hires, cost per hire (which can be calculated in many ways), and hiring manager feedback.

There are many other metrics that are used to track recruiting performance which work well for different environments. One key area of metrics is understanding what your are measuring and that you have the correct process of inputting data to pull from. Many times I have seen reports that don't really reflect a true picture. Example: Days to fill. Many people count the days from the time the req was created until the time the req is closed. This is ok, but it usually gives a false impression. What I mean is, a req could be opened one day and then put on hold by the hiring manager or by the business for a week or even a month or two. I don't want those days counting against actual recruiting days. I have filters put in our system so the days are only counting when the req is in an open status. I want to know how long my recruiter is really spending time on a req. This way I can see that recruiting worked on a req for 16 days and the reqs total durations was 64 days. This alerts me that there were circumstances outside recruitings control. It also makes me aware to dig deeper in case it is brought up within management why it took so long to fill this req.

Many times, senior management doesn't get the full story. I run some back reports that reflect how long a manager takes to respond on a received resume that my recruiters have already screened. This also impacts the days to fill metric if you have managers that are not quick in responding. All of this information helps to paint a picture so you can understand your metrics better as well as where you can help to improve the overall ROI across the board. That's why I'm a very big promotor when it comes to metrics.

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