Measuring and Tracking: Recruiting and Retention Success

The old management concept: “what gets measured gets done” applies with

equal force to measuring and tracking recruiting and retention success. A recent

survey revealed that 36% of organizations surveyed indicated that recruiting and

retaining talent were their top priorities. As the demand for qualified workers

increases, many executives and business owners are realizing that without a

reliable strategy to attract and retain qualified workers, their businesses could fail.

Why should you measure and track recruiting and retention? Consider these

benefits:

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Better recruiting practices help fill positions faster.

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Better hiring practices reduce the risk of selecting a bad hire.

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Better retention practices help eliminate the costs of recruiting and training

new employees.

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Recruiting and retention is expensive. Tracking allows you to put your

money and time where it will have the most impact.

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Tracking allows you to convince skeptical members of your organization

that they must get on board with your efforts, in order to save money and

build great teams.

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Tracking allows you to be efficient. It’s difficult to know what really works

otherwise.

There are two approaches to tracking recruitment and retention measures.

One is the traditional approach which measures key metrics of recruiting and

retention and the other uses a more pro-active “sales” metric.

Traditional measures of recruitment and retention success measure the

following:

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Time to hire: The total time required for hiring. Obviously, if positions go

unfilled, you lose productivity.

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Quality-of-hire: How satisfied the organization is with a hire, usually

measured by manager surveys 6-12 months after a hire.

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Number of vacancies outstanding: The total number of company job

vacancies. This measure helps you keep track of where your efforts need to

be focused.

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Cost-per-hire. The total cost associated with a given position and hire.

Obviously, if you spend too much money recruiting, the long-term benefits

of the employee will be reduced.

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Longevity-of-hires: How long new hires stay with the company. If you

measure all the true costs costs of recruiting, you’ll soon find that keeping

good current employees is much more economical.

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Recruit source effectiveness: The effectiveness of each source the company

uses to generate candidates. This might include evaluating advertising,

employee referral programs, staffing agencies and so on.

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Time-to-productivity: The time it takes a new hire to become productive in

their new role. Included in this measure should be the time of the person

who trains the new hire.

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Boomerangs hires: If you have a substantial number of returning

employees, the time to orient and train them is obviously reduced. If you

make it clear to departing employees that you welcome their return if they

discover that the grass was not greener, you may find those employees to be

one of your most efficient ways of filling recruitment needs.

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Turnover numbers. What is the turnover rate for individual managers and

departments? This number will help you track and prevent problems.

While these measures help you track traditional measures of recruiting and

retention success, they also have a downside. Hiring managers and recruiters may

be tempted to fill positions too quickly, for example, in order to reduce the “time to

fill” number. They may encourage recruiters to fill a need as fast as possible with

the wrong person instead of waiting or working harder to find the right person.

Traditional methods may also encourage recruiters to wait for requisitions to

be open to identify and build relationships with mission-critical talent, at which

point it might be too late. Finally, traditional tracking might encourage hiring

managers to screen and sort quickly, instead of networking to find the best person.

Because of the problems inherent in traditional measures, some

organizations have moved towards operating more like a sales force than a

traditional recruiting force. In terms of measures, the “sales” recruiting team

measures outbound activity, such as establishing relationships and making

presentations, just as much as inbound activity, such as taking sales orders, or

making hires.

For some teams focused on wooing top talent, such as a specialized

construction engineer, the sales cycle for these individuals can be five years or

more. The team is not measured so much on the number of jobs they fill as they are

on the number of qualified individuals they identify and the relationships they

create. Similarly, retention is measured by the number of quality employees an

individual manager keeps and his or her overall turnover numbers.

A recruiting team that is focused on outbound activity like a sales team will

build the equivalent of a sales funnel, or a series of stages in a relationship that

may culminate in a person getting hired at your company. The sales cycle for this

kind of recruiting moves from identifying the candidate, though encouraging the

candidate to be willing to listen to opportunities or refer others. Some recruiting

managers have taken to calling this progression “suspects, prospects, and

applicants.”

Using a sales model may also require moving recruiting out of specific

department or individuals and making sure that everyone is aware of potential

opportunities to “sell” your organization to desirable employees, as well as to make

sure that you reduce turnover for current employees.

For many organizations, using a combination of the traditional recruiting and

retention metrics, along with increasing their “sales” opportunities, will yield the

best results.

Copyright © 2009. No part of this material may be reproduced without written permission from Lynne Eisaguirre,

Workplaces That Work, 303-216-1020, Lynne@workplacesthatwork.com, www.workplacesthatwork.com