What Can Great Recruiting Mean For Your Company? - A Blog Post With Sprinkles (Data)

Hey everybody, Happy New Year! I hope you had a wonderful holiday.

In previous blog posts, I wrote about empathy as a starting point for candidate engagement in recruiting (seeing things from the candidate's point of view) and having a more rigorous project management approach to recruiting/interviewing for increased speed and accountability in your organization. The last post in the series can be found below:

Now I want to try to prove to you, with numbers...

...that what I say has merit.

WHAT CAN GREAT RECRUITING MEAN FOR YOUR COMPANY?

Presented is a case study from a real client that is sort of a best-case scenario, but I want everyone to understand what is possible when you make talent acquisition a real priority, are open to improvements in your hiring process, and have a candidate-focused outlook.

This client went through a growth spurt over the last year and a half. They are a small company that needed additional hands on deck to help sustain and accelerate that growth.

This particular company was very easy to work with:

1. The hiring managers and executives were available to me when I needed them (I did not abuse that privilege).
2. I had great intake sessions for each search that yielded a wealth of information 1) to tell the company’s story in the market and 2) against which to vet candidates.
3. They were open to my suggestions for improvements in their hiring process.
4. They committed to fast, detailed feedback on resumes and interviews.
5. They made quick decisions and moved confidently to close the people they wanted to hire.

Really, a dream client for any recruiter. We placed 10 people in a little over a year - not a huge project for us but a big jump for this company.

To give you an idea of how fast they moved and made decisions, the average time from submission of the winning candidate to that candidate’s start date was 38.3 days.

Yes, I said the start date. That is incredible! When you factor in a 2-week notice period for most new hires, they were turning the candidate interview process around in two weeks on average. It was typically a two-step interview process: a phone interview with the hiring manager followed by an onsite visit with panel interviews.

These hiring managers made interviewing a priority over other fires they had to put out because they understood that getting good people in there quickly helps prevent those fires in the first place... or at least gives you someone to delegate fires to.

Please understand this does not mean we filled all the jobs 38 days from when we started the search. Not the case. Some went very quickly; some took more time until we found the right candidate. However, the interview process and decision-making were fast no matter the length of the overall search.

This company has doubled its year-over-year revenue and is growing at a sustained rate of 20% per quarter with nothing in its way in the near future. Executives told me the people we found for them directly helped make this growth possible.

People really are your company’s greatest asset. If your recruiting effort reflects that as a fundamental truth instead of a glib motto, it can really pay off and impact the P&L.

WHAT DOES GREAT RECRUITING LOOK LIKE BEHIND THE SCENES?

This is critical info to share because, unless you have worked in recruiting, it is difficult to know the breadth and depth of what we do.

Over the course of this project, I reached out to 587 people on this client’s behalf. In all of these searches, I was not just looking for one person; I was building a pool of candidates for future needs. I built the pools on the first search and went back to them subsequently, expanding them with each new search.

I call it Talent Mapping.

Now when that client calls me about a new hiring need, the pump is primed and we can get a fast start.

The outreach breakout, by department, was:

• R&D Engineering: 127 outreach for 3 hires
• Quality Engineering: 171 outreach for 1 hire
• Regulatory Affairs: 126 outreach for 2 hires
• Production Manager: 4 outreach for 1 hire
• Manufacturing Engineering: 159 outreach for 3 hires

“Outreach” means that I thought an individual had an interesting enough background that I wanted to speak to them about this company/opportunity. It does not mean that I was always successful in that regard or that the person was a fit. Some candidates:

1. ?I already knew from previous work and was able to speak with quickly.
2. were not looking to make a move at that time.
3. had already made a recent career move.
4. did not quite have the right experience.
5. interviewed but were not the right person for the client.
6. interviewed but thought the role wasn’t the right move for them.
7. I was never able to speak with.

All kinds of things happen behind the scenes. Quality Engineering turned out to be the hardest nut to crack for some reason (they did hire a second QE from an employee referral). For the Production Manager, we were lucky and found the winning candidate early (I’ll take luck wherever I can find it).

Of the 587 total candidates, I ultimately submitted 47, or 8%, to the client.

That is pretty on point with our company numbers overall; we sit around a 10% lifetime average. I spend a lot of time with each candidate before submitting them to a client for consideration. When I submit a candidate it is because I believe they are worthy of an interview.

Of those 47 submitted, the client interviewed 35, or 74%.

That is a great number in my opinion. High, but not too high. If the hiring manager is not saying “No” sometimes, I am vetting people too tightly and not giving them the luxury of choice.

So 47 submitted candidates for 10 hires. That’s a ratio of 4.7 candidates submitted per hire. That number is in line with our company’s lifetime averages, as well.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

If you take nothing else from this case study, know that candidate-friendly process improvements to talent acquisition do hit the P&L noticeably, although it can be difficult to measure to the dollar. A good process (speed and accountability) and a good story (connecting your company to what the candidate is looking for) will also attract candidates that would never have looked at you otherwise.

Yet in my experience, recruiting is the one area that gets the least attention for improvement. Most attempts at process improvement to recruiting involve automation, CRM changes, etc. – usually things that dehumanize the process and distance the company from the candidates.

The new year is a time of new resolutions. I’d encourage you to make changes that are candidate-friendly first and company-friendly second. Reduce the steps needed to get candidates into conversations with your hiring managers. Invest in interviews without overly prejudging the resume; if the resume is close, give people the chance to impress you.

Be aware of your company’s recruiting brand in the marketplace. Is your online application tediously long? Are you known for long, drawn-out interview schedules and lack of feedback to candidates? What kind of impression do you leave candidates who apply to you? Word gets around on stuff like that. Let’s change it for the better.

Think Talent Friendly this year. It pays off.