Just a quick thought:
Business = Process + People + Assets
If a business is really the sum of the people executing a process using company assets, then maybe it’s time to think harder about the people part of the equation.
People are now the scarce part of the story. It hasn’t been that way in most of our lifetimes. It will be, at least until 2046 when the US DOL says the labor market will start expanding again.
In today’s job market, there is a significant talent shortage, and many companies are finding it challenging to recruit the right candidates. This issue is further compounded by the fact that most recruiting teams are understaffed, making finding and hiring qualified candidates even more difficult.
To put it into perspective, imagine if your customer service team were taking 3-4 weeks to follow up with customers. You would quickly realize that you need more customer service representatives to handle the increasing workload. You might even consider bringing in an outsourced call center to help manage the influx of customer inquiries.
Similarly, if your sales team was taking two weeks to follow up on a lead, you would likely hire more BDRs and sales reps to help speed up the sales process. In some cases, you might even consider outsourcing your sales efforts to an agency.
Given the urgency of these situations, it’s essential to look at recruiting emergencies in the same way. Companies need to take swift action to address their talent needs and ensure that they have the resources and support necessary to find and attract top candidates in today’s competitive job market.
If you can’t help being short-staffed, then you still don’t have to settle for 1-2 week turnaround times. With a communications hub like PivotCX your recruiters can be engaging with 3x the number of candidates as before. Make sure your recruiters have the right tools, and they’ll be able to meet their goals.
Recruiting is a challenging task that requires a lot of time and effort to find the right candidates for a position. Recruiters often struggle with managing their workload and meeting the hiring targets on time. In this blog post, we will discuss five ways to improve recruiter productivity and streamline the hiring process.
Response time is a critical factor in candidate experience, and it can significantly impact the hiring process. Measuring response time for Candidate Development Representatives (CDRs), recruiters, and candidates can help recruiters to identify areas for improvement. A quick response time can create a positive impression and enhance the candidate’s interest in the company. On the other hand, a delayed response can lead to a negative experience and may result in the candidate accepting another job offer.
Engagement rates can help recruiters to determine how many candidates are actively engaged in the hiring process. It is essential to track how many candidates have had a human-to-human conversation with the recruiting team. Measuring engagement rates can help recruiters identify areas of improvement and adjust their recruitment strategy accordingly.
The time taken to make an offer to a candidate is critical in the hiring process. It is essential to determine how long it takes to move a candidate from the application stage to the offer stage. This information can help recruiters to identify bottlenecks in the hiring process and improve the time-to-hire metric. As 90% of candidates take the first job they are offered, it is vital to ensure that the company can make an offer quickly to secure the best candidates.
Secret shopping your hiring process can help recruiters to identify areas for improvement and provide a better candidate experience. Recruiters can find their job on different platforms and apply under different names to test the application process. They can then evaluate how easy it was to apply, whether everything worked, and whether candidates were able to complete the application process. After applying, they can measure how long it takes until a recruiter contacts them and how long it takes until they have a human-to-human conversation.
Adding Candidate Development Representatives (CDRs) to the recruitment team can help to improve productivity and streamline the hiring process. CDRs can be responsible for making contact with candidates and ensuring that they do not fall through the cracks. This responsibility can free up recruiters to focus on building relationships with candidates and hiring managers. This approach can help to ensure that candidates are not lost during the hiring process due to lack of communication.
Improving recruiter productivity is critical to the success of any recruitment team. Measuring response time, engagement rates, and time-to-offer can help recruiters to identify areas for improvement. Secret shopping the hiring process can help to identify friction points and provide a better candidate experience. Adding CDRs to the team can help to streamline the hiring process. By implementing these five strategies, recruiters can improve productivity and meet their hiring targets on time.
Unfortunately, recruiting is subject to the Law of Large Numbers. The law of large numbers states the larger the sample size, the more the results will trend toward their expected value.
Consider this:
10 applications 4 qualified, 40% Quality
100 applications 14 qualified, 14% Quality
1000 applications, 132 qualified, 13.2% Quality
10,000 applications 1,290 qualified 12.9% Quality
When you only have a few candidates, things can look unnaturally easy. As you get more candidates, you see the quality decrease. But you know what? That’s ok. It’s how math will always work. The more you scale up, the more accurate your measure of quality will actually be.
The standard way to measure that is simply to figure out what percentage of candidates are actually qualified:
Around 30-40% of candidates will never engage with your recruiting efforts. Whether you call, text, or use smoke signals doesn’t matter. They will simply not respond. We believe the best measure is the percentage of qualified and engaged candidates. Here’s the math:
This is hard to measure if you don’t have a communications hub like Pivot. But when you do, you can analyze your candidate sources for the number of engaged candidates they supply… and you’ll be surprised by the difference between sources. Ultimately, there is one inescapable rule:
You cannot hire people you cannot talk to.
Since we don’t hire every day, we don’t give it every-day priority.
Rule 1: Always be recruiting.
Rule 2: See rule #1.
The single biggest recruiting mistake is stopping. Why is it a mistake to stop recruiting?
• It takes lead time to restart the recruiting engine. It takes time to push buttons, refresh content, and post jobs.
• It costs money to restart the engine. You’ll have to sponsor jobs to get candidates quickly.
• You will not build a talent community,which further increases future recruiting costs.
• Managers will retain poor performers because they don’t have confidence there will be a new person quickly.
• You’ll fail to exploit opportunity if you can’t staff up quickly.
You don’t have to have every job in the company posted all the time. There are reasonable limits. But you should always be recruiting for positions like:
Sales, Engineering, Production (people who make the product, provide service or bill hours), and Administrative Support
So, what do you do if someone applies and you just can’t hire them? It’s easy:
“That position is filled. Would it be OK if I reached out to you if the job opens in the future?”
Most candidates will happily say, “Yes,” and when you do go to make a hire, you’ll have people you can reach out to start the process immediately.