It goes without saying that the job market is very competitive with many businesses fighting over the same talent.
Every company wants to secure the perfect candidates and streamlining your recruitment process by using talent acquisition metrics will put you ahead of the rest – the hiring process is the first impression candidates have of your company after all.
So why should you be measuring your talent acquisition metrics? It’s simple. If you’re measuring something you can work out what you need to do to improve it. Taking out the guesswork means that you can feel empowered in your decisions.
There are plenty of metrics you can measure, but after speaking to hiring managers, we’ve narrowed it down to five.
1. Time to fill a position
This timeline starts from when the job advertisement goes out to the successful candidate accepting the offer.
If this metric is quite high in your company, you can look at ways to reduce it. Interviewing is time consuming for both the interviewer and interviewee.
Knowing ‘your time to fill’ will make forecasting a lot easier, therefore saving time and money. It will also allow you to be more strategic as you can realistically work out how long it may take to replace a former employee.
Splitting up this metric by department may also show what practices are the most efficient for reducing this time.
2. Employee referrals
Everyone loves a referral and they come with many benefits.
So, why should you be listening to employee referrals?
- You save time as there is no need to go through hundreds of applications.
- You save money as you don’t need to spend money on job advertising.
- You improve your quality of hire as your employees know their jobs and your business culture better than you do, so will therefore be the most equipped for knowing who the right people for the job are. This also leads to a higher acceptance rate.
- You lower your risk of making a bad hire.
If you haven’t got an employee referral programme in place then you really need to start. Offering incentives to employees which make referrals will encourage more to do it.
3. Channel costs
You need to be measuring this to make sure you are putting the right advertisements in the right place to source the right people.
It makes no sense to be putting loads of money into something which only attracts average candidates. What channel works best for you to attract and hire quality talent?
If you don’t know this already, then it’s really time to start.
4. Offer acceptance
Offering a candidate a job is just one side of it. Them accepting it is another.
How long does it take for a candidate to accept your offer once they have received it? Are there times when they don’t accept the offer at all and decide to go elsewhere? If so, why?
These are the questions you need to be asking yourself as the time and effort it takes to find the perfect person and offer them the position, you obviously want them to accept it.
The offer acceptance also allows you to:
- Understand where you sit in the market against competitors.
- See how robust your screening process is – the higher the acceptance rate, the better the screening process.
- See the quality of your communication with candidates – many job offers have fallen through due to lack of communication.
- Assess your employer brand – are your perks and benefits competitive?
5. Employer brand
What reputation does your business have in the market? Are you a company people aspire to work for?
The typical 9-5 good salary isn’t enough to secure high quality candidates anymore. They want to see your culture and reputation.
So how can you measure your employee brand?
- Through social media engagement and mentions
- Assessing news outlets
- The average number of website visits you get each month (the more people visiting your website means the more people know who you are).
- Reviewing your Glassdoor reviews.
Understanding and using your talent acquisition metrics will massively improve your recruitment process. If you need any help, drop us a message on jay@wundertalent.co.uk or matt@wundertalent.co.uk.
