Fixing the Recruitment Function
I’ve observed over a decade, in most cases, recruiters have been held accountable for how many vacancies they fill, how fast they fill them, and sometimes turnover rates are considered. Their bonuses are based on those three metrics. And that is it. Don’t get me wrong, these metrics measuring quantity, speed and retention rates are important and should be assigned some weight for when recruiters performance is evaluated, yet without a highly weighted metric on quality, the performance of the recruitment function and its evaluation is flawed and ineffective so long as the emphasis is only on quantity, speed, and retention metrics while completely ignoring quality metrics.
It’s simple, if you only base the rewarding/bonus of recruiters based on, quantity and speed, that is what they’ll focus on and most of them won’t really care about quality as long as they are filling vacancies quickly as per the company’s criterion for performance required of recruiters. This is basic human nature.
My question is why isn’t the recruitment function also objectively and measurably held accountable for filling vacancies with hires that in time turn out to be either great, midcore, or poor based on these candidates’ post- hire performance evaluation results and overall objective feedback?
How would recruitment functions overall policies, procedures and behavior change if the bulk of their bonuses were based more heavily on hire quality metrics? On how the candidate they put forward would perform in the future. Can an objective accountability system be put in place where if a recruiter hires a candidate that turns out to be a superstar in the organization, the recruiter responsible for that hire would be recognized, appreciated, and rewarded? And the opposite as well when a recruiter is held accountable if they end up hiring a candidate that turns out to be a disaster?
And so, when recruitment transforms from “Lets hire a suitable candidate quickly “to “let’s find the PERFECT match for this role and culture”, the benefits run deep. On an individual business scale, when implemented with every vacancy systematically, this change would have a positive long-term effect on job satisfaction, employee engagement, overall corprate culture, overall organizational effectiveness, customer satisfaction, financial growth, and potential realization of ‘Employer of Choice’ aspirations.
On a wider markets scale, should every company adopt this basic change, the dynamics of the war on talent would change.
I haven’t seen or heard of any company adopting this approach. Maybe because it’s difficult to implement? As the saying goes “It’s the rough road that leads to the heights of greatness”.
Ahmed Basaad
Stakeholder Experience Consultant