Blog

24/10/2023

By Chris Andrews – Managing Director

A well-defined and effective recruitment strategy is crucial for attracting and selecting top talent. However, it is important to define what success means to your organisation and how to measure it.  Here, we break it down and will explore key indicators and strategies to measure the success of your recruitment strategy.

1. Time-to-Fill. One of the primary metrics to evaluate recruitment success is the time it takes to fill a position. A vacant role can impact productivity and revenue generation. Monitoring time-to-fill also enables you to identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your recruitment process.
2. Quality of Hires. Measuring the quality of hires is essential to gauge the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy, eg evaluating factors such as employee performance, engagement, and retention rates. Assessing the long-term success of candidates in their roles provides insights into the accuracy of your selection process and the alignment between candidate capabilities and job requirements. While the clearest reflection of successful hiring, this approach has the disadvantage of being subjective and a fairly delayed lag indicator.
3. Cost per Hire. Calculating the cost per hire helps you maintain and evaluate the efficiency of your recruitment efforts. Include expenses such as advertising, candidate assessments, agency fees, and internal recruitment team costs. Tracking cost per hire enables you to identify areas where you can optimize spending, such as leveraging cost-effective sourcing channels or streamlining the selection process to minimize costs without compromising quality. While your measuring approach may sometimes feel arbitrary (average interview hours can vary greatly by hiring manager), having a metric at least gives you a starting point for review.
4. Candidate Satisfaction. Assessing candidate satisfaction provides valuable insights into the candidate experience and the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy. Gather feedback from candidates about their overall experience, communication, interview process, and onboarding. Utilise surveys or structured interviews to understand their perceptions and identify areas for improvement, as positive candidate experiences not only enhance your employer brand but also increase the likelihood of candidates accepting job offers and referring others to your organisation.
5. Source of Hires. Tracking the source of hires allows you to assess the effectiveness of your recruitment channels. Identify the channels that generate the highest-quality candidates and yield the highest conversion rates. This data helps you allocate resources strategically and invest in the most effective sourcing methods. Analyse the performance of job boards, social media platforms, employee referrals, and external agencies to determine which sources deliver the best results.
6. Diversity and Inclusion. The main goal here is to make sure you are not inadvertently missing untapped skill areas due to lack of awareness that your media selection, or processes unduly favours one demographic over another.  Evaluating the diversity and inclusiveness of your hires is crucial in measuring the success of your recruitment strategy and ensuring you are reaching as far as possible when attracting applicants.

Measuring the success of your recruitment strategy allows you to identify strengths and areas for improvement. Our ecosystem of services enables us to measure and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses across all stages of the talent funnel; Plan, Map, Brand, Search, Sell, Filter. Our experts provide tailored support across recruitment delivery, process optimisation and employer branding. Contact us for more information.