The job market is a dynamic, living thing that demands adaptability. For businesses of every size, intuition and personal connection are vital for finding ideal candidates. But they are only part of the hiring puzzle: analyzing recruitment metrics gives a more accurate picture of where your hiring process is succeeding and where you could stand to improve.
Understanding Recruitment Metrics and Why They Matter
Recruitment metrics refer to the data that provide insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of your company’s hiring process. Metrics are individually insightful but the data is also symbiotic, informing the other. For example, if the most expensive recruitment source you use yields the highest quality candidates, it may be a mistake to reduce that budget because an overall budget metric suggested cost-cutting.
Analyzing hiring metrics gives companies ideas on how to work more efficiently, which hiring methods work the best for your type of business, and can even anticipate growth to generate a long-term hiring plan before it’s critical. In small businesses where employees may wear many different hats—including participation in hiring—collecting and reviewing these metrics is essential to focus and coordinate your efforts.
Recruitment Metrics to Track
Consider tracking these important recruiting metrics:
Time to Fill
Simply put, “time to fill” indicates the number of calendar days it takes to find and hire a new employee. The Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) offers a few different starting points:
A hiring manager submitting a job requisition
A job requisition’s approval
A job posting going live online
The end date is typically when a candidate accepts a job offer. This metric can show internal delays in approvals or posting.
Time to Hire
While “time to fill” analyzes the company’s time efficiency, “time to hire” is a more candidate-centered metric. This number indicates the time from when the candidate applies to accepting an offer. It can show lags in company response time, a leading reason for losing out on a potential hire.
Cost Per Hire
This is a metric that accounts for all the costs your company incurs while hiring new employees. It may include:
Internal hiring administrative and legal costs
Cost of job postings
Advertising costs
External recruiter fees
Travel expenses
Recruitment or hiring bonuses
Relocation costs
To calculate cost per hire, add up all costs in a time frame and divide it by the number of hires. This metric helps the company know how effective the hiring budget is being used, and where to make adjustments if the cost per hire is limiting the number of new employees you can add in a year.
The average cost per hire is $4,700, according to SHRM data. But some estimates come in as high as three to four times the total salary of the position your company is seeking to fill. It’s worth identifying areas to trim the overall cost.
Application Completion Rate
If your company uses an online application system, this metric can show how many candidates start but never finish the process. It can indicate bottlenecks in the application, or note if candidates consistently leave sections blank or seem to have insufficient space to answer questions. This metric allows you to make the appropriate edits so the application process is smooth for the applicant and provides the right amount of data for the company.
Offer Acceptance Rate
This metric helps you know the percentage of offers accepted by prospective employees. Considering that it always costs you something to make an offer, this metric is valuable in analyzing each step of the recruiting, interviewing, and offering process. If your company has a high initial response rate but a low offer acceptance rate, this may indicate:
Your job descriptions may be misleading about actual job responsibilities
Your interview process could be too long or too demanding
Your communication has some lag time that’s causing you to lose out on desirable hires
Quality of Hire
Once a prospective employee has been hired, analyzing metrics doesn’t need to stop. In the first few months of a new employee’s tenure, you can evaluate whether they are meeting the company’s standards. If you have a trial period, this can be a useful metric to determine whether you and the new employee are a good fit after all.
According to Indeed, “The basic calculation for quality of hire would work as follows: job performance score + social engagement score + productivity score / total number of factors = quality of hire.”
These criteria will vary from company to company, but a noticeable decline in quality of new hires can motivate you to examine the factors that lead to low productivity, for example. Can they be attributed to a point in the hiring process that could use some scrutiny? It’s better to address those issues long before hiring, onboarding, and a period of lesser quality work.
New Hire Turnover Rate
While analyzing quality of hire comes from the company side, turnover comes from the employee side. This metric shows how many new hires stay on for some defined period of time. If you’re seeing an unexpectedly high turnover rate, this can indicate:
Problems with onboarding
Confusion about or dissatisfaction with job responsibilities
Mismatch of employee to supervisor
Interview mistakes regarding skills or experience
Analyzing Hiring Metrics
Modern software makes gathering hiring metrics a breeze. A tool like ApplicantStack offers reports for a whole suite of data, allowing your company to track recruitment metrics with ease. These reports can provide great insight before a hiring push puts you in a bind.
A budget-conscious company is always looking to save on the bottom line, but the right metrics can do much more than just encourage an overall slash and cut. This data can give you insight if your recruiting spending is in the right places, and offer guidance to reallocate resources to actions offering you the most quality hires. Get access to the reports your company needs to track hiring metrics when you start your free trial.
In most cases, and for most job openings, recruiters want to secure top industry talent for their open roles. Why? Beyond being the most qualified or suitable person for the position, top performers come packaged with an array of benefits that can give organizations a competitive advantage, improve company culture and help develop organizational leadership.
But attracting and retaining the most befitting employees is easier said than done. So, what exactly are the best ways to ensure you’re attracting the most qualified individuals? And, what does an effective and successful recruitment strategy look like?
Here, we’re breaking down the basics required of a solid recruitment strategy to ensure you’re getting your money’s worth not just out of your newly recruited, talented employees but your hiring efforts, too.
The Basis of a Strong Recruitment Strategy
There’s more to attracting, sourcing and securing top talent than simply posting a job listing. Even if it’s well-written and alluring, there are always others that are more so. This can be especially challenging for smaller organizations looking to get on the same playing field as their larger corporate counterparts.
Hiring managers must not only curate their job listings to a tee but also their strategies to identify and attract those most suited for a particular role. If you’re unsure where to start, or where it went wrong for your organization, start with these seven recruiting basics and get them right:
1. Identify Your Needs
You can’t fill a ravine with water and expect it to be as easily traversed on foot then if there were a bridge instead. Before you go looking for candidates, you first need to identify what you need to help your organization succeed.
This involves collaborating with relevant stakeholders to:
Define job requirements and expectations.
Clearly understand the specific skills, experience and qualities desired from the ideal candidate.
Once everyone is aligned on the best way to proceed, you can start building the hiring bridge.
2. Attracting Qualified Candidates
To attract the right people, you need to create compelling job descriptions and employer branding strategies. This includes, but is not limited to:
Clearly stating the company’s values.
Effectively communicating your culture.
Identifying and making evident the growth opportunities with your organization.
Doing these three tasks the right way will help you attract high-caliber candidates.
3. Sourcing Qualified Candidates
In a perfect world, highly qualified candidates seeking employment would deliver themselves straight to your front door. Unfortunately, hiring isn’t that easy and, oftentimes, top talent needs to be head-hunted. Hiring managers should leverage various sourcing channels, including job boards, social media platforms, professional networks and even industry-specific events, to proactively seek out qualified candidates. A passive candidate is someone who isn’t actively searching for new opportunities but would be happy to entertain an attractive offer.
What Do Top Candidates Want From Organizations?
Before jumping into more concentrated efforts that will help you land top talent, let’s take a look at what job seekers actually want from their prospective organizations. While fair and just compensation is still highly important for a lot of candidates, especially top talent, other elements are equally, if not more important.
For example, a recent study revealed that 91 percent of new hires who received quality culture training felt more connected to the organization than those who didn’t—underscoring the importance of a healthy, active culture for new and prospective hires. Culture training involves educating and familiarizing new hires with the values, norms, beliefs and behaviors of your company’s culture. It’s not just about learning the job tasks or responsibilities; it’s about understanding the organization’s ethos and how to thrive within it.
This often involves training about how to effectively handle challenges within the organization and be a strong leader, as well as expectations for collaboration; diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and more.
Beyond culture training, here are a few more nice-to-haves in today’s market that can bolster your organization as one worthy of employing the most talented candidates in your industry:
Evident opportunities for professional development
Strong work-life balance
Open and honest communication
How To Attract Top Talent
Great, so we know how to get the basics right and what job seekers truly want from their prospective companies. Now, let’s streamline, optimize and condense everything we’ve learned into one actionable checklist that will surely help you secure the right people for the jobs at hand.
You attract what you exude. When your brand communicates enticing qualities like excellence, transparency and drive, you’ll inevitably entice like-minded people who wish to work for such a strong, reputable company.
In terms of recruiting, here are a few to-do’s:
Define your employer value proposition (EVP): Identify what makes your company unique as an employer.
Craft a brand message: Develop a clear, concise and compelling message that communicates your EVP to potential candidates.
Build a strong online presence: Leverage social media platforms to share employee stories, company achievements and behind-the-scenes glimpses of your workplace.
Provide an exceptional candidate experience: Ensure a seamless and positive experience for each and every potential candidate throughout the recruitment process — which translates into a better employee experience if you play your cards correctly.
Invest in employee well-being: Prioritize employee well-being by providing work-life balance initiatives, mental health support and wellness programs.
2. Write Compelling and Detailed Job Descriptions
No one wants to be left guessing after reading a job description. Clear, compelling posting should include:
A clear title that’s representative of the role.
An engaging overview of the job.
Key responsibilities.
Requirements and necessary qualifications.
Salary information.
Expected working hours.
Information about company culture.
3. Use More Than One Sourcing Channel
Casting a wide net is key to attracting more talent. The larger your sample size, the more likely you are to catch qualified candidates. This is especially important for small businesses that, by default, aren’t on the same playing field as their larger counterparts.
To do this effectively, post your job openings on popular job boards, industry-specific websites and social media platforms to maximize visibility. But, instead of doing all of this manually, use an applicant tracking system that can cast the net for you.
4. Offer Competitive and Creative Benefits
According to research by the Harvard Business Review, 60 percent of employees say the cost of going into the office outweighs the pros. That being said, one of the most important benefits employers can offer in 2024—beyond insurance and the like—is a well-balanced hybrid working model.
This and other creative benefits, such as student loan assistance programs, more paid time off and funding for professional development are all attractive incentives for today’s workforce.
5. Emphasize Career Development
According to a 2023 study by LinkedIn Learning, providing learning opportunities is the number one strategy for retaining top talent employers can use. This is important because, when you secure top talent, you want them to stick around.
For recruiting, this means:
Highlighting growth opportunities from the get-go
Building attractive and effective training and career development programs
Actively encouraging continuous learning
Providing adequate mentorship and coaching
Conducting performance reviews and providing actionable feedback
6. Commit To Continuous Improvement
You don’t have to get recruiting right on the very first try. Each organization is different, and depending on the type of industry you’re operating in and what your ideal candidate looks like, your recruiting strategy can change. But that’s the beauty of it!
The easier you can make the hiring process on yourself, the quicker you can adapt your recruiting strategy to fit the needs of diverse candidates — no matter where they are in the talent pipeline.
Streamline Your Hiring Process For Success in Securing Top Talent
From candidate sourcing to retaining top talent, Applicantstack makes it easy to quickly scale your team or fill niche roles without any of the hassle associated with traditional, drawn-out hiring practices. Text-to-apply functionally puts control back in candidates’ hands: While they continue their job search, you can start reviewing resumes.
These features, and many more, are what make Applicantstack the premier choice for streamlining your hiring process to attract the most high-quality candidates for your team. Interested? Try it for free today.
Employee recruiting is a powerful part of your hiring toolbox. Asking employees to flesh out an applicant pool capitalizes on a natural human response to invite others to positive experiences. A referral program incentivizes and rewards employees for their contributions to the company.
A Jobvite survey in 2020 found that, after internal hires, employee referrals were the second-most effective hiring source and the second-most useful resume consideration factor. Here are some tips to build an internal referral program that really works.
Your Employees are Your Best Brand Ambassadors
From posts on social media to relaxed after-work happy hours, we all tend to share stories and experiences about work with friends and acquaintances. Ideally, that content is positive and encouraging. Employees who are engaged in and excited about their work – and share it – become the best ambassadors for the company’s brand or culture. If your company sells an end-user product, that’s free advertising. If your company needs to fill positions, that’s expanding your potential applicant pool.
You can reward this behavior by creating opportunities for internal referrals for hiring. Rewards can vary; no one referral program fits all companies. The first steps involve examining company culture so your employees feel inclined to bring qualified candidates to the table.
Employee Recruiting Requires a Strong Foundation
It may seem overly simple, but the most important foundation for collecting hiring referrals from your employees is their job satisfaction. You can’t control each employee’s feelings about every aspect of their job, but you can provide a company culture that values each member of the team. Some tangible ways to achieve this include:
Maintaining Good Company Culture. Conduct surveys that help identify where company culture is thriving and lacking. Then, take that information to improve where possible. Good company culture includes well-known and accepted values like trust, diversity, mentorship, and autonomy. It has clear policies on work and dress code flexibility, automation, and tangible and intangible benefits.
Paying Employees What They’re Worth. Ideally, employees will have been hired at a salary they’re happy with. Implementing a program of consistent salary reviews and an open-door policy for negotiations goes a long way in helping employees feel valued.
Communicating Perks and Benefits Consistently. While keeping some benefits confidential might seem important, it can lead to gossip and jealousy among employees. When people feel cheated or left out of perks, even if the company feels it has valid reasons, it can negatively affect employee morale. A well-communicated and consistent benefits policy encourages transparency and unity.
Communicating Clearly Open Jobs and Responsibilities. Clarity and detail in job postings is important, allowing potential candidates to see all the requirements, benefits, and salary from the first interaction. For internal recruiting, you should provide all the same detailed information, along with any additional tidbits a current employee might need to know, especially if the job opening isn’t in their department. Facts like which team a person might work on, sample projects, details around the office layout, and access to perks are conversational and can help an employee sell the position to a friend.
Rewarding Referrals and Employee Recruiting Efforts. Consider the cost of hiring an employee from a wide open pool. The Society of Human Resource Management puts the median number at around $1,200. If an employee helps you circumvent that cost, a gift card for lunch may not be quite enough. Recruiter Rikka Brandon suggests, “Offering your team an incentive that actually makes a difference to them may just give them the motivation to be intentional and active about recruiting.”
5 Ways to Involve Employees in Recruiting
Now that we’ve identified how to make sure your company is a rewarding workplace for employees to recommend, here are some ideas of how to build an internal referral program:
Start at Onboarding. Every time you bring a new employee on, explain the referral process. Help them feel like an important part of the recruiting team from their first day. Even if you don’t currently have openings, this effort ensures that future opportunities aren’t lost to “I never heard about it.”
Allow Talent Acquisition Team to Present at Company Meetings. Periodic presentations ensure employees can hear about new developments in the program and creates a forum for questions.
Remind Employees How to Find Open Listings. What seems obvious to those involved in the hiring process may not be so clear to busy employees. Ensure there is a centralized location for open positions that’s easy to access. Provide periodic reminders along with highlighting incentives.
Identify a Streamlined Process for Submissions. Every company will have a different preferred way to receive employee referrals. Make sure your organization’s process is simple and direct. You could create a web form or an email address that remains the same, even when people leave their roles. Periodically remind the staff how it works.
Encourage Feedback on the Program. If employee participation is low, you may need to take a hard look at the communication, process, or incentives. Ask for honest feedback without fear of retribution.
Manage Your Candidates with ApplicantStack
Once you’ve examined company culture, created an easy-to-use program for submissions, told everyone about it, and the referrals start coming in, you need a system to make sure none of the stellar candidates fall through the cracks. Even if you don’t end up hiring a referral, it’s vital to respect the efforts of your employees with follow-through.
ApplicantStack is the perfect tool to easily and efficiently sort, rank, and track the candidates in every step of the process. Internal notes can help you track where the referral came from. Your employee can receive their reward and your gratitude for a new valued member of the team.
In the first part of our coverage of recruiting trends to expect this year, we highlighted the importance of upskilling as a hiring and retention tool. Part two outlined the value of automation and how much time it can save when seeking and bringing on top talent.
Next up is the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) and how it will impact the hiring process this year and into the future. Review the benefits of utilizing a platform that harnesses the power of AI to filter applications and identify top talent based on specific, pre-determined factors.
Recruiting Trends Coming in 2024
Here’s what has been covered (and is still to come) in our five-part series:
Trend #3: More Artificial Intelligence in the Recruiting Process
In a study performed by Korn Ferry, more than 80 percent of CEOs and senior leaders of companies reported expecting AI to have a major or extreme impact on their organizations. Respondents specifically mentioned the expectation of relying on AI in the recruiting process, as it brings many appealing benefits. Using AI can save money, speed up processes and identify top candidates, even those who don’t have the traditional experience that was once expected.
But two of the risks associated with relying more heavily on AI relate to accuracy and strategy. Growing concerns around the security of AI-powered tools have led to identification of inaccuracy, especially if intruders can adjust how the platforms function. Hiring strategy is unique to each individual organization, and the capability of AI may not quite align.
In addition to recruiters and hiring managers relying more heavily on AI, jobseekers may take part in what it can offer in the process of finding employment. Candidates can utilize the functionality built into AI tools to tailor cover letters and resumes to specific roles, as well as identify positions that might be good fits.
But security remains a risk for anyone relying on AI, as scammers have found ways to leverage these tools to seek personal information and trick trusting candidates into sharing financial details. It’s vital to cross-check any job openings found with AI tools on company websites to ensure that they’re genuine.
Relying on AI will take more of a front seat this year among those involved in hiring. But as is the case with any other up-and-coming resource, verifying the information is essential.
ApplicantStack is a powerful applicant-tracking system designed with the needs of small business owners in mind. It incorporates the functionality used by big business, allowing smaller organizations to compete for top talent. Plus, the platform includes a few standout features, including text messaging to meet candidates where they are, prescreening and knock-out questions to save time, and the ability to schedule interviews instantly.
Quality employees can make or break a business of any size but are vital to the health and success of a small business. Whether you need to replace a worker who’s left or your business is expanding, hiring top talent takes energy, time, and company resources.
According to benchmark studies conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management, the average cost per hire is $4,683. Though that number might feel like it applies more to large corporations, consider that the median cost came in at $1,244. If your budget for recruiting feels small, here are five ways to help stretch it a little further.
1. Consider Hiring From Within
Small business owners and managers often have the advantage of personally getting to know the strengths and talents of their employees. As businesses grow and change, employees may want to take on new roles within the company but may not see a clear path for a changing job description. As you define the parameters of a new job in the company, consider looking around at the employees you already have. It may require some creativity to add or subtract responsibilities from an existing employee into a newly created job description, but it’s possible a perfect candidate or candidates are already a part of your team.
If your business is undertaking a multiple hire situation, something like an anonymous survey of employees may reveal current employees’ hidden career goals or talents. This information can provide clarity on both promoting from within and drafting a job posting.
2. Optimize Your Job Postings
Armed with data from your existing employees, current and future business plans, and immediate hiring needs, spend some time carefully crafting your job postings. You could involve current managers or department leaders to help describe specific duties and desired skills. Watch out for common buzzwords in both job titles and descriptions that could be interpreted more than one way. An applicant with extensive customer service experience, for example, may apply for a vaguely described “account manager” position, but in your business, that job requires bookkeeping experience. Be sure the posting includes detailed information about requirements for:
Qualifications
Education
Experience
Skills
Special requirements (such as atypical work hours or travel)
And include details for:
Flexible work arrangements (in-person or remote work possibilities)
Paid time off (such as company holidays, starting vacation time, and sick leave policies)
Salary range
An Indeed survey revealed that employers often felt the need to revise job postings because they received too many under-qualified candidates. It will save both yours and the applicants’ time if your posting is clear about non-negotiables.
3. Evaluate Where Your Budget Is Best Spent
Small business owners often carry the load of performing various tasks. Whether your business is just starting out or you’ve seen quick growth that outpaced the hours available in a day, it’s likely there are helpful tools that you may not have had time to research. A personal approach to identifying and crafting job descriptions may feel like a valuable use of your time. Once the applications and resumes start pouring in, however, delegation of some tasks might ease some of the additional load. That’s where an applicant tracking system (ATS) like ApplicantStack comes in.
We’ve all been there: sifting through a long email thread with multiple people to locate some nugget of information about an applicant. Or trying to remember where and how you saved a resume file on your hard drive, only to come up with an empty search box. From your first application to making offers, ApplicantStack organizes and sorts relevant information for all involved to evaluate. It makes for smooth collaboration and prevents dreaded errors that can cause your company to miss out on a perfect hire.
4. Hire Young Talent
Experience and education are hard and fast requirements in some sectors, but consider if your company has room to grow by hiring young people just entering the workforce. These individuals may bring an level of enthusiasm and willingness to learn that benefits the team, and come in prepared for a starting salary commensurate with their position. Your company may consider mentorship as one of its core values to prepare new workers for a long and fulfilling careers.
5. Re-Evaluate Your Public Brand
Ask yourself (or your marketing team) some probing questions about how potential candidates are introduced to your company. It’s common practice for a job candidate to start their research with the basics.
How do you present yourself publicly?
If you have social media accounts, are they updated regularly with useful and informative posts? If you don’t post regularly, do they look neglected? Are they an important part of your business identity?
Does your website accurately reflect the current course of your business? Are hours of operation, contact information, or staff pages updated? Does it function properly or are there broken links or pages?
In terms of cost, social media and website updates can take anything from company time to the investment in an agency rebrand. Low-cost solutions like courses from a social media coach or simple text and photo website updates might make a big difference in your public persona.
New hires in a small business represent exciting growth. Hopefully these five tips can help you recruit quality talent even on a budget. Success awaits with careful consideration of your internal resources and external tools like ApplicantStack. You’ll be organized and on the way to hiring the best workers for your company.
