Acing Recruitment- Irrespective of Who Drives the Market

We like to categorize things for better understanding of our surroundings or markets. Candidate driven versus employer driven job market is one such phenomena. Candidate driven market is when job openings are plentiful and available talent is scarce, also known as tight labour market. Its an employer driven market or slack market when the opposite is true. Many talk about these markets as if one can strike gold with certain strategies, but let’s be honest- beyond tighter salary negotiations, nothing much changes when the market changes in this day and age. To add to that, the kind of roles that are available in market are so diverse that it’s almost impossible to fit the whole of job market into these two buckets. An employer driven investment banking job market can very comfortably coexist with a candidate driven tech job market.

There’s another phenomena called ghost posting or phantom jobs. These are the job postings which do not have a real job opening. Sometimes employers post them just to build a funnel or to analyse the market. Sometimes they are the positions which are closed, but employers havn’t taken them down. Not only ghost jobs give a fake sense of job market, if posted regularly they can bring down the credibility of the employer.?

The fundamentals of sourcing, weeding out irrelevant profiles, reach outs, interviewing and negotiations remain the same. Like they say in investing, there’s no right or wrong market. If your fundamentals are right, you shall reap returns. How do employers make sure they remain on track irrespective of market condition?

The holy grail of ‘recruiting funnel’        

Contrary to sales funnel, the recruiting funnel doesn’t have to be huge. Higher the number of applicants, longer it takes for the recruiting team to shortlist the right ones. Yes, there are tools to do that, but ask any recruiter how much time they spend at the top of the funnel and you’ll know. The goal instead should be to get ‘qualified candidates’ at top of the funnel. For this your company needs to attract candidates, at the same time dissuade all from applying. Knowing which job portal to use for which kind of role and gamification of screening or prescreening test which do not cost an arm and a leg are ideal to have a healthy top of the funnel.?

Weigh in active vs passive candidates        

Active candidates are readily available as they apply to the job post, make themselves available for interviews and show active interest. On the flip side, with ease of job application process, they have many interviews going on simultaneously and they may go offer shopping after reaching final round.

Passive candidates, on the other hand, may not have real reason to shift and only incentive for them becomes ‘money’. They may also increase the rate of ‘no-show’ or ‘offer decline’, since they never had interest in switching jobs.?

Tight Interview Process        

Our advise is to follow 3B’s

• Back Calculate: Avoid cliches like ‘We wanted the person to join yesterday’. Be logical and decide when you want someone to start and set a reverse timeline, considering notice periods, number of interviews, availability, holidays & leaves of people involved.
• Brisk work:? Don’t fall for the ‘Aur Dikhao’ trap. If you find a good fit, initiate the process, take interviews & make a decision as soon as possible. As per the paradox of choice, if you interview too many candidates, you may get overwhelmed and end up delaying the whole process.
• Be humane: Recruitment process is high on human touch. Build trust, sell the job, check in on candidates, provide context and enough information about the recruitment process. Keep the channel of communication open.

Keep track of numbers        

“You can't improve what you don't measure.” Make note of recruitment metrics that you want to track to ensure efficient hiring process. Again, this would vary according to sector and seniority, so ideally you should track this separately for each role and then arrive at your ideal number.? Some of the most important metrics are:

• Cost of hire: Aim should be to lower the cost of hiring. Include costs like salaries, admin overhead, tools, job portals, external agency, interviews cost, compliances cost and others.

• Time to hire: Shorter the time to hire, better is the candidate experience and of course your costs.

• Source efficiency: If you’re using an ATS, you would know your sources of hire. It usually shows a pie chart of how many applicants are there from different job boards/career site/referrals. Finding out source efficiency will help you allocate your resources effectively.?

• Applicant to hire ratio: This ratio is typically useful to reverse calculate how many candidates you need at the top of the funnel to close this position. It is extremely useful for the bulk entry level roles. Again, having this ratio ready for your usual open positions will help you find out the blockers.?

• Interview to hire ratio: Since interviewing the the most resource intensive activity, this ratio helps in evaluating your interviewing process as well as quality of candidates going for interviews.?

The way forward        

The rate at which companies hire today is unprecedented. With huge mandate, comes the choice overload of new-age AI tools to help with hiring & ever changing technology. Recruiters are bound to be overwhelmed. In fact, we go a step further and advise our clients to recognize the strengths & weaknesses of such tools and adapt only what’s absolutely necessary.?

Embrace the new, but also stick to the basics and measure your hiring success by following the candidate’s journey till they leave the company. It’s impossible to be better at hiring if you cannot tell how the hires turned out as employees. So tracking the employee lifecycle right from when they enter your recruitment funnel as candidate till they leave as employee is as critical for hiring as it is for other employee engagement initiatives. And this is where HRtech plays an important role. Organizations which have mastered this or at least taking steps in this direction, will be the ones leading the modern day business.

Originally published under Merito Insights.