I don't give a hoot, yeah I said hoot, about how many candidates it takes to get a hire. You know why? Because after being in this industry for 15+ nearly years you learn something about what it really takes. I'm going to break this down for you dear readers. We've all been doing it wrong lately. And, here is something more. You can blame whoever came up with the stoopid metrics.

Most recruiter's work every minute on worthless, meaningless, made up, ever changing, and totally unrealistic metrics. Let me say it another way. You're busting your arse for nothing. Every recruiter at some point will be asked to hit a target number. The problem is that they're just numbers. And recruiters will only focus on the numbers. Like this...

Number of candidate submitalls,

Number of phone interviews

Number of screens

Number of 2nd phone interviews

Number of in-person interviews

Number of emails.

and on and on and on and on..............

Complete waste of time.

ACTUALLY, I believe that most recruiters spend about 80% of their time achieving a meaningless target number. EIGHTY PERCENT!

The other 20% is the actual recruiting. And that other 20% is very simple. So simple in fact. It's when they screen candidates and engage with hiring managers for feedback. That's about 20% of the time. That is recruiting.

Now....Let's turn around for a moment. Talk about a solution, or maybe it's a concept for others.

To truly reduce the waste of time it takes to get a hire is not going to be easy at first. But these three steps will get you in the right direction to golden hires and more time with family, gym and netflix.

A ONE

Get rid of all the effing metrics. Burn it. Let recruiters focus on what works. Picking up the phone and calling candidates. That's it. All you need. A resume and a phone. Recruiters are pretty resourceful too. If they can't source a resume from one spot, they will go another direction.  Metrics based on submits and interviews is a huge waste of time and effort.

A TWOOO

Stop low balling candidates. You can't buy a new Lexus negotiating for a used Toyota prices. Get real. This means that recruiting and HR need to stop managers from low balling candidates at the offer stage. This is doable. Not easy. But doable. Just takes some backbone and push back when managers want to low ball their finalist.

A THRREE

Stop spending time and money on crap that never ever works. That means even social media like tweeting jobs. Stop forcing recruiters to spend hours in overly cumbersome craptastic applicant tracking systems that has a million unqualified, unemployed, and un-hireable (is that a word?) folks that apply by the minute (by the second if you work for Amazon, Google or Microsoft).

Does any of this ring true? I mean seriously. I'm not complaining here. Okay, maybe a little. But, I'm being realistic. There is a solution to all this metric madness. It's called the garbage can.