With the roll-out of the COVID-19 vaccines comes economic recovery in the United States. As businesses rebuild, hiring activity has significantly increased, with 86% of employers now hiring.
Despite the 5.9% unemployment rate and potentially deep talent pools, many employers are experiencing a talent shortage. Around 74% of employers report “too few qualified candidates” as one of their major challenges. On the candidates’ end, many are discouraged from applying due to a lack of response from companies.
As we discussed in our article on recruitment hacks, the best way to get talent is to accelerate your hiring process and make it more efficient for your candidates. One of the best things you can do is to track recruitment metrics to create a data-driven approach toward improving the candidate experience. Here are three key metrics to pay attention to:
1. Hiring Time
Recruiters should be familiar with “time to fill,” “time to hire,” and “time in process” metrics of recruitment.
“Time to fill” refers to the amount of time that elapses between the approval of a job requisition and the day a candidate accepts a job offer, while “time to hire” measures the time it takes to move a candidate through the hiring process — or everything that comes after a job seeker becomes a candidate by applying.
Finally, “time in process” breaks down the time to hire by the amount of time a job seeker spends in each step of the hiring process, which may include screening resumes and conducting interviews.
Knowing how long your hiring time is can help you shorten your process, making you much more efficient. You need to measure your team’s ability to identify and advance qualified talent to reduce bottlenecks.
For example, you may discover that your hiring managers are taking weeks to bring in job candidates for interviews. Keeping track of time lets you pinpoint these trouble spots and alleviate them.
2. Cost Per Hire
The cost per hire measures the cost-effectiveness of your recruitment process or how much it costs you to get new staff. It’s an invaluable metric that guides your recruitment budget.
After all, human capital is an asset that should be aligned with your overall business strategy, company purpose, and culture; you need to invest resources to get successful candidates through your recruitment funnel.
Fortunately, it’s easy to ask for cost help online, thanks to remote work and even remote education. Today, many accountants get their qualifications online and are just as qualified as those with a traditional degree.
Checking in with someone who has an online bachelor’s degree in accounting can be helpful, especially if you’re unfamiliar with some recruitment costs.
An accountant can review the organization’s historical data and propose a budget for you, as they’re trained in financial reporting and advanced managerial accounting.
Together, you will have to add internal costs (referral bonuses, office rentals, recruiter payment) and external expenses (advertising fees, recruitment event costs, signing bonuses), then divide the sum by the number of hires in a specific time period.
3. Offer Acceptance Rate
The offer acceptance rate indicates how well you’ve sold a candidate on the position. Although it represents the end of the hiring funnel, this metric also underscores the recruitment team’s performance.
It’s not always the timing, salary, and benefits that persuade a candidate, but the company values, culture, and candidate experience as well. And given the current trend of companies increasing wages and benefits to attract workers, organizations need to offer potential employees more.
A low acceptance rate means something is off with your recruitment process. It’s possible that the candidate’s expectations were mismanaged during the hiring process, or the job description felt inaccurate.
To keep you from wasting your time in sending job offers that won’t be accepted, ask candidates who didn’t accept the job for their reasons. Encourage them to provide critical, honest feedback on what turned them off. And then use their insights to fix the problem.
It’s really not easy to recruit, onboard, and retain candidates. Recruit CRM offers an all-in-one applicant tracking solution that helps you visualise your candidate pipeline, ensuring fewer candidate drop-offs. Contact us today to learn more.
Written by:
Rina Judson is a freelance writer with a passion for business writing. The ins and outs of human resources are one of her favorite topics to write about. When she’s not working on a new piece, Rina can be found practicing yoga at home.
