Top Metrics to run Mid-Year Diagnostics on Your Recruiting Measures
We are about to enter the back half of the year, and whether you are expanding to leap out of quarantine doldrums or are starting fresh, it’s still time for a mid-year review of your recruiting metrics. Determine, today, just how your team has fared since the beginning of the year.
Previously, our team created a list of the top hiring metrics that every manager should have on their dashboard. You can see that information below. While we review these metrics constantly, we take extra time to deeply measure each as the end of June approaches. This ensures we are providing the highest possible level of service to our clients. We look for trends that could indicate changes in the market, we look for best practices some recruiters on out ream are using and implement them company-wide, and we look for gaps in our training that must be fixed in order to reach our goals for the year.
This is not only a recruiting exercise. This is a survey of performance that can and should be done in every sales environment across every product or service category. A giant ship will not turn on a dime, so let’s make sure the ship is headed in the right direction now before it’s too late.
Your metrics may be different than ours, but the key is to begin developing a diagnostic platform that will give you a barometer on your business. In 2006, we began seeing trends in the business that were unexpected. By 2007, those changes were so evident that we knew something catastrophic was happening. If not for the development of a scorecard that gave us clear indications of a changing economy and informed decisions that directed us to respond accordingly, our firm could have suffered the fate that hundreds of others did during the 2008 recession.
What’s On Your ScoreCard?
I have a great friend that lives and dies by a daily scorecard. He has been able to establish criteria whereby he only works to achieve his “points” each day on his scorecard. After he has reached his goal for the day, he decides whether or not to shut it down and go enjoy the day or dig deep and achieve greatness! Most days, he blows away his points, but at a minimum, he hits his points for a day before he even considers checking out for other activities. The cool thing about this is he has the ability to judge his performance on a daily basis. As long as he hits his daily points, there is no need to make major adjustments in his business.
Recruiting and most other sales can be simplified into steps that could have a daily scorecard, but if you are like me, that doesn’t work. The micro metrics are important — daily calls, phone time, inbound, outbound, etc — but it’s the macro metrics that provide a true understanding of how your business, industry and the economy are working… and that’s what I want to know.
How do you measure your business? What can we do different that would enhance our work or the work product we provide to our customers? Let us know below. We have also provided a list of the most important metrics every recruiting manager should have on their dashboard.
Top Hiring Metrics Every manager Should Have on Their Dashboard
Effective hiring is critical for a smooth-running company. The way to know if what you are currently doing is working is by tracking metrics.
Stay on top of these critical measurements. They give you important insight into what is successful and what needs improvement.
Candidate Quality Ratio
This metric is also called the ratio of qualified applicants to total applicants. Tracking this ratio lets you monitor how many candidates that you spend time on in the recruiting process are actually a good fit.
It refers to those chosen for an interview. According to experts, the goal is to get a minimum of three-quarters of your candidates selected for an interview. If your rate is less, it means the ones chosen for you to review aren’t measuring up to the needs and desires of you or your hiring team. For hiring managers, this means you have now become the “quality metric” for your hiring practice.
Try to empower your recruiting team to be the “quality metric” of all candidates submitted. If the candidates that you are seeing do not measure up to your expectations, spend some time recalibrating with your team. Set expectations, but more importantly, establish a standard for your minimum criteria. The better this metric gets, the more efficient your time is spent as a hiring manager in the hiring process.
Time to Fill
The industry-accepted calculation for this metric is: Time to Fill = Total Number of Days Job Is Available and Unfilled. At Cerca Talent, because our focus is to find the right candidate as soon as possible, we measure this in two different ways.
1. Candidate Sourcing Time
It makes a major difference in a company’s efficiency when the time to fill a job, from starting a job requisition to hiring a qualified candidate, is short. The standard, according to Recruiter.com, is 10 to 14 days for presenting a qualified slate of 3 candidates. The experts recommend tracking how long it takes to present a slate of three qualified candidates and how many slates are assembled.
For difficult roles in Clinical Research or Clinical Diagnostics, the areas that Cerca Talent specializes, you might find that the 10 to 14-day window is consistently too short of a timeframe. This is especially true in some highly technical environments. Continue to track this metric to see how your organization manages different areas of your business.
2. Candidate Processing Time
The processing time refers to how long it takes from introduction of the candidate who is ultimately hired to the time when they ultimately accept the position. Many people will say that processing time is the time it takes from approval for hiring a candidate to the actual time she starts working in the new position, but this time has many variables associated with it and does not provide a usable statistic that can be managed.
According to ERE Media, a variety of circumstances add to this time period. For example, if the new hire needs to relocate, it can add weeks to the process. Make this a simple metric that can allow for gains in efficiency and effectiveness in the actual interviewing process. Measure this retrospectively with each hired candidate and work to improve your interviewing process. This makes for a better candidate experience and can even improve the quality of hire, when done correctly.
Quality of Hire
According to research done by the Aberdeen Group, the most critical hiring metric is Quality of Hire. While this measure can be difficult, find a systematic way to do this at your company based on the desires for new employees. Your Quality of Hire (QoH) metric could be based on the first two years of performance reviews, or for commercial teams, it could be a calculation based on their performance to goal. For a long term QoH metric, one could look at the number of promotions new employees receives over a one, two- or three-year time period.
According to the Recruitment Metrics and Performance Benchmark Report done by Staffing.org, there are definite benefits from frequent measuring the quality of those hired. The more often it is done, the happier managers are with the quality.
Cost of Hire
A bad hire is expensive. According to a Harris poll, over 40% of people responding said it was more than $25,000, and a full 25% said it was more than $50,000. Cost of hire is an important metric! Within leadership roles or commercial teams, this number can skyrocket due to lost revenue or mismanagement of revenue generating personnel.
This metric includes:
- Advertising agency fees
- Employee referral bonuses
- Employee relocation costs
- Third party recruiter fees
- Travel expenses for applicants and staff
- Sign-on bonuses
- Recruiter salary and benefits
- Lost revenue for open territories
- Lost revenue from mismanaged employees or customers
Tracking these essential metrics helps any organization, large or small. It tells you right away how effective your talent acquisition efforts are. When you know the numbers, you can pinpoint where change needs to happen, speeding up improvements to the hiring process.
If you are looking for a little assistance in analyzing these numbers as they apply to your recruiting efforts, or if you are working to expand and enhance your search efforts today after measuring performance against these metrics, readying yourself for a post-quarantine relaunch, call the diagnostics recruiter team here at Cerca Talent+, or email me directly – [email protected]. Having been leaders and hiring managers ourselves, we are the professional search firm that knows the diagnostics industry and can help you improve your talent branding in all theses metrics…and more.
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Scott Rivers is the Managing Director of Cerca Talent+, a talent agency for the Diagnostic and Life Science Industries. Scott's recruiting experience extends into the areas of Diagnostics, Life Sciences, Oncology and Genetics. His team manages recruitment for all levels within the commercial area of these businesses.
As a leader who has worked at all levels of commercial, medical sales and global marketing, Scott is an intense professional who works with organizations to fine tune talent branding. If you are a leader looking to expand your team with professionals who are focused on delivering work in which they take pride, and you can be proud of, every day, then Scott would be privileged to help you in the process. Having been a professional in the fields where you focus, Scott knows the ins and outs of the companies, the business and the customers you are working to come alongside.
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Cerca Talent+ is a full-service Executive Search Firm with a strategic focus in the areas of Clinical Diagnostics, Molecular Diagnostics and Oncology, Genomic and Genetic Medicine. Our clients choose Cerca because of our deep understanding of the industries we serve. They continue to work with us based on our extensive market knowledge, vast connections and quality of results.
We Provide Top Talent to create Peak Performance. That’s a good match for any company. Partner with the group that can talk shop and gain rapport with the pros who will lead your business into the future. Email Scott Rivers today at [email protected], or call direct at 201-594-2101, and we will begin the process of finding you Top Gun Talent guaranteed to help you set records.