Learn how to focus on the single most important recruitment metric.

But does the battle end here?

The answer is no.

With hiring on social media becoming a trend, HR teams are ceaselessly chasing passive talent. Recruitment marketing is the new fad. While hiring the right talent is important, it is equally vital to retain and build your current talent.

Recruitment Metrics that Matter

Recruitment metrics are calculations that can be used to track the success rate of hiring teams and help teams to optimise their HR process. But what happens after the HR teams close a job position? Do they measure and track the growth and performance of the new hires as per their most hiring metrics, such as job-fitness, culture-fitness, and future performance?

Hence, it is equally imperative to weave the post-hiring indicators into your hiring metrics. It is easy for HR teams to follow the latest hiring fads that are not only highly ephemeral but also do very little in helping teams do what they are supposed to do to build and manage the human resource capital of the organisation in alignment with the business goals.

Measuring post-hire metrics will not only help companies evaluate and optimise their hiring strategy, but also nurture their talent, and augment retention.

Looking beyond the Conventional Recruitment Metrics? While talent acquisition teams are busy chasing the latest most promising hiring techniques that help them achieve the newest, most sophisticated recruitment metrics, companies are actually losing sight of factors that actually matter. Studies show that a growing number of organisations have no idea about how effective these methods have been. Only one-third of US-based firms actually take the time out to check if their hiring practices actually lead to good hires.

A study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates the average cost per hire stands at a significant $4,129. Even the amount of time employers spend on interviews has almost doubled since 2009, according to research from Glassdoor. But despite such staggering costs of hiring, recruiting talent remains the number one concern for CEOs - most of them view the unavailability of talent and skills as the biggest threat to their business.

Therefore, engaging passive candidates and feeding them into a pipeline has become a priority to most companies. Talent acquisition is no longer about filling open roles quickly, but to have a ‘strong bench’. The focus has shifted to the strategic impact of higher-quality hires and more authentic relationships with current employees.

Another reason that hiring has become tough is due to the fact that retention has become harder. Firms today constantly hire from their competition, there also seems to be a lot of hiring done to mainly replace people who’re leaving. Studies by Linkedin show that the most common cause of employees to consider a position is for career advancement which is a result of companies not promoting to fill vacancies. Therefore, it is safe to say that most hiring is a result of poor retention.

Talent acquisition teams need to be able to work back from desired business outcomes and company core values to design realistic talent acquisition strategies. They should have the ability to analyze and report on every aspect of talent attraction, acquisition and retention.

But before we address these issues, let’s answer a simple question.

How do you ensure that your talent is not poached by TA teams?

According to Harvard Business Review, the majority of jobs last year weren’t given to people who applied for the job. Instead, the companies went looking for ‘passive talent’. To hire in short-spans and fill vacancies within business deadlines, companies cram their hiring funnel with as many profiles as possible. Some employers also advertise jobs that do not exist in order to keep a ready army for the ‘war of talent’ that rages within the job markets.

The outsourcing of the recruitment function has become a growing trend within many companies. While this might help HR teams focus on what “really matters”, it takes away control from within the organisation and places it with the RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) agents. These agents then scan social media sites to “look for the right talent”, that is passive, of course.

With a surge in search for passive talent and the practice of outsourcing the recruitment process, companies forget to think about nurturing the talent that is already in their organisation.

Hiring passive talent from other companies means to hire talent that is not actively looking for a job but will make a switch if they are given a package that might spark their interest. Hence, remuneration becomes a deciding factor and other significant attributes like work culture, job fit and a long term commitment take a back seat.

Another problem that results from this is that when talent from outside the organisation is hired in senior or mid-levels, it can cause the existing talent to doubt the organisation’s commitment to their professional growth.

Early this year, when the Japanese auto major Nissan Motors's launched its first Global Digital Hub in India (Thiruvananthapuram), they leveraged EasyTalent to help them recognise talent from within their organisation. As the HR looked to fill the new cybersecurity roles for the Nissan United - Security Operations Center (NU-SOC), our easy-to-use platform equipped their talent acquisition teams to identify the right people who were already a part of their IT teams. An exercise which would have probably taken months was completed within 24 hours, by identifying cybersecurity champions from within the organisation. The benefits of such an exercise? Team members feel empowered as the company tries to encourage skilled candidates while promoting the learnability of new skills.

Inward mobility also shows employees that the organisation is interested in their career development and professional growth. HR teams end up not wasting long hours, and financial resources on reaching out to “passive talent”.

Only 28% of talent acquisition leaders today report that internal candidates are an important source of people to fill vacancies—presumably because of less internal development and fewer clear career ladders.

Businesses spend a lot of time hiring, with very little time spent on analysing if their strategies are actually working. Very few employers actually know which channel produces the best candidates at the lowest costs. Why? Simple, very few spend time to track the outcomes. However, Tata, a company that has stood for excellence for generations, and is also a client of ours, has done better than the rest. They calculate which schools send them the best performing candidates, that stay the longest and are paid the lowest starting wages. It’s not too hard to conclude that other employers should inculcate such a practice. Campuses that have adopted digital practices are able to structure their campus intake, have a wider reach, and collect some data points that matter. HR teams don’t just have to just attract graduates or entry-level talent but need to be good at hiring for various levels. The Rationale Behind the Recruitment Metrics

Organisations will have to understand that the HR function does not end after making a hire, but really begins, once the hiring decision is made. Companies need a renewed focus on their appraisal process with job assessments that track performance holistically. Job assessments conducted before or during the appraisal cycle can help in tracking and measuring relevant data. Being able to reflect on such data is the key to really know if your teams hired right. With increasing focus on continuous performance appraisal and management, the conventional annual review is taking a backseat at more and more organizations. If your HR teams are not checking to see how their hiring practices predict the quality of hires, your business is at the risk of being left behind in one of the most critical recruitment metrics. . If your HR teams are not engaging in continuous performance evaluation and measuring employees’ growth and development goals, then your business is at the risk of losing the ‘war for talent’. Therefore, ‘lean-forward' hiring metrics are crucial for building a data-driven hiring practice. Reimagine your Recruitment Metrics With EasyTalent, your HR teams now have consolidated dashboards pertaining to hiring and appraisal of employees on a single platform.

EasyTalent enables HR teams to continuously engage with employees to measure performance. Managers can now analyse performance with customisable appraisal SmartForms, remotely administer skill and competency assessments, and engage with their team through interactive video interviews to evaluate job performance. Managers can also coach teams to help them realize their full potential. Continuous engagement and conversation with the team vastly improves retention metrics. Keeping everyone aligned with the organization’s strategy, building a culture of open communication and constant improvement helps all employees to guide their own professional development in ways that are truly meaningful to them.

Empower your teams to measure the metrics that matters the most

Please write to us to find out more.