How to measure a Recruiter/Sourcer/?

There are allot of ideas, ways, and thoughts around how to measure a recruiter/sourcer/?. The ? stands for whatever title you are using for the job. First let me explain some basic information that will help determine the best method to measure with.

First what exactly is the person doing? We in the industry call staffing professionals different things. Some are interchangeable some are specific, and all have different functions, for example;

Staffing Consultant

Sourcer

Recruiter

Candidate Generation Recruiter

Account Management Recruiter

Talent Acquisition

Placement Specialist

Resource Manager

As you can see there are allot of titles given to staffing professionals, and I have not even named them all. For the purposes of this post, we are referring to an individual’s goals, not a team goal.

The biggest key to how to measure a staffing professional is not by title, but by the function, they are performing and what of that function they have a majority of the control over. For example, if you are a Sourcer and your function is just to source perspective candidate’s resumes, not talk to them, not screen them, just source, why would you be goaled on hires. You have no control over hires. You are having to rely on; someone else to screen them, someone else to represent them to the hiring manager, someone else to arrange tech screen, and again represent them to the hiring manager, someone else to arrange face to face interviews, someone else to interview them, someone else to monitor the interview loop, someone else to make the case to hire, someone else to make the offer, etc... As you can see as a Sourcer, doing nothing more than sourcing you have very little control over the actual hiring. So why would you measure a sourcer like this? The answer is you should be measuring them on the number of candidate resumes they find that meet the qualifications of the positions or profile. Not the number of hires.

If we learn to measure each staffing professional based on the function they are performing, and how much control they have in the overall process, we will get a much more accurate idea of how they are doing, how what they are doing impacts the whole process, and were, if any, there are issues within the total process.

Let's look at an example of a complete process (readers digest version and note this is not the whole SLC (see blog post on SLC) this is only the more specific parts.).

If the process is as follows;

1. Meet with hiring managers (HM)

2. Creates job description and SLA

3. Source

4. Screen

5. Present to HM

6. arrange teach screen

7. Present to HM or arrange face-to-face interview

8. Interview

9. Present hire choices

10. Make offer

So, that is the process, and you have a sourcer who only performs step 3, why would you measure them on hires. They have virtually no control over hires. Instead measure them on what they do control, sourced candidates. You can see by the process above how easily it would be to figure out where the sticking points may be, as long as you are measuring everyone involved on the things they control, not on things that are out of their control.

I recently attended a webinar by a highly successful staffing professional from a Healthcare organization. He outlined their process they have now, and who owned what, they had two staffing professional that combine to do the entire process. Basically, one owned steps 1-4 the other 5-11. The ones who owned 1-4 were measured on screened candidates, the one who owned steps 5-11 was measured on interviewed candidates. Notice not hires. The reason is because neither had any control over that. In most cases, the HM had all the control, and for allot of reasons, might choose not to make a hire, despite a hirable candidate. Some reasons could be, deciding not to hire, hiring an internal, changing the role, budget changes, etc... So why would the staffing professionals be held accountable for something they have no control over. By the way, this organization boasts some of the best hire numbers in the industry. Now that is not to say this holds true in all cases, in some cases the staffing professional has enough control or enough openings to warrant being measured on hires. If internal hires count, then measuring on hires could be ok. It is a case-by-case, process by process decision.

What it boils down to is finding that thing that makes up the majority of what the staffing professional does and has control over and measuring them on that. That is not to say you do not keep track of other things, keeping track of them help you determine were the issues might be. It just means you do not measure the staffing professional’s performance on them.