How do you measure and improve recruiting productivity at your organization? To answer this question, you need to know which metrics to look at and understand how to use the data to increase efficiency - especially as your company scales its hiring efforts. However, figuring out the ins and outs of this process can be tricky. That’s why we, along with our friends at Lever, BambooHR, and Glassdoor, decided to gather the following panelists and host a webinar around this topic:
- Megan Jensen, Talent Acquisition Partner, BambooHR
- Mark McFarland, Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition, Relativity
- Shannon Ferguson, Head of People, Blueboard
- Jacqui Edwards, Manager Talent Acquisition Operations, McGraw-Hill
- Meredith Herberg-Waldron, Global Talent Operations Manager, Eventbrite
Check out the full video here and recap below. For more great HR Webinars, stay in touch via our Resources page.
Below are the top recommendations from our panelists on how to measure and improve overall recruiting productivity - from sourcing all the way to retention.
Self evaluate
While tracking metrics is important, it’s not enough to simply collect a ton of data on sources or employee retention. You have to self evaluate and understand exactly what you want to measure and why. That’s why the team at Eventbrite leans into slicing and dicing their data in ways that will reveal deep, relevant insights. Also, since no two organization’s recruiting processes or strategies are exactly the same, it’s important to figure out which metrics are most valuable to your specific goals.
For instance, at Blueboard, we prioritize a values-driven hiring process. We like to take time to get to know our candidates, have them understand our organization, and invest resources into making sure the person we make an offer to is a great fit. This means that we have to acknowledge the tradeoff and understand that our hiring process might take longer than the average one. So for us, it doesn’t make sense to base our success off of a time-to-hire metric. Instead, we may focus more on tracking the candidate NPS or new employee survey results.
Empower your team
Your recruiting partners should feel like they have ownership over the process. This ensures that they’re more invested in the outcomes. For example, McGraw-Hill uses a recruiter scorecard that measures recruiting effectiveness, project management, and customer focus. They used to fill out these scorecards on a monthly basis and discuss the metrics with each recruiter. But they quickly realized that, despite these conversations, they were seeing little improvement.
So they decided to change things up and empowered their recruiters to score their own performance. This enabled them to take a more active role in the process and better connect the dots when it came to their strengths and weaknesses. It also gave the leadership team valuable insight into the recruiting process from employees who were in the trenches everyday.
Onboard with purpose
Studies have found that organizations with a standardized new employee onboarding process experience 62% greater new hire productivity and 50% greater employee retention. So you can see why a strong onboarding program is a must. Check out these quick wins for employee retention in the first 90 days.
The panelists agreed that it’s important to define roles and set expectations clearly from the start to maintain high productivity and employee retention rates. They also recommended making a strong impression even before the official onboarding process starts - preferably within the first 48 hours of a new hire accepting their offer. This could be in the form of a “next steps” call with the team or a memorable welcome gift in the form of an experiential reward. This article from Harvard Business Review offers additional tips:
- Teach them how things work
- Help them assimilate
- Define what "good" looks like
- Set up early wins
- Build a sense of community
Retain top talent
Yes, recruiting efforts extend all the way to employee retention! The team at Relativity takes a holistic view when it comes to retention. For them, the process of retaining employees begins with onboarding and is strengthened by providing growth opportunities and listening to feedback through quarterly pulse surveys.
At Blueboard, we also recognize that a common reason why retention falls is because employees don’t feel valued for their work. That’s why we’re so proud of our annual anniversary research and development reward. For each anniversary, every one of our employees is given a budget to think of a research question and take a trip to find an answer.
We hope you find these tips helpful when it comes to improving and measuring your recruiting productivity and employee retention. If you’re looking for personalized employee recognition ideas to boost your recruiting efforts and new hire retention, we’d love for you to browse some of our experiential employee onboarding gifts here at Blueboard. To learn more about Blueboard and get in touch with our team, simply reach out via the Request Demo button above ^^.
Stay tuned for more valuable webinars and upcoming events here on our Resources page - we can’t wait to see you again online!
