The Important Recruiting Quantity Metrics
Managing a recruiting
team is not unlike that of managing a major league baseball team. The
tenured manager understands how to get rookies off to a good start by
developing the proper habits to achieve big league success. Once a rookie
gets seasoned, the focus shifts to other skills that continued to be worked on
based on specific achievements, or lack thereof.
How can you tell when
one player is doing well and another is struggling and needs some
attention? It is often initially apparent in the results. The
outcome itself, however, may not provide an explanation and to really
understand it is necessary to evaluate the stats. The times at bat, the
averages, the on base percentages, etc. Yes, the true answer lies in the
numbers. For recruiters, we refer to these as the metrics.
Leaders who learn to
manage by the numbers have a better understanding of their team’s strengths and
weaknesses and individual skill set deficiencies, and they know where they must
spend their time to improve both team and individual performance. They also
have the ability to see trend lines – both positive and negative which allows
them to predict the future. That’s right, predict the future.
When a rookie comes to
play in the recruiting arena, a good manager knows that the first focus has to
be on getting his players ‘at bats’. The more at bats they will have, the
better chance they will have of success. The tenured recruiting manager
knows that his first job is to get his rookies at bats by getting them on the
phone. If the new recruiter does not get enough “at bats”, they will
fail. Contrary to popular belief – even with today’s social media,
resume grabbers, aggregators, spider engines, job board alerts, and much more
at our finger tips today – recruiting is still a phone business. Developing the habit of being on
the phone and not off the phone is a critical objective in the first 90 days
for all new players. This conditioning must take place to develop the
habits necessary for success in recruiting. Managers must also institute
“minimum” levels of expectations on the critical activity metrics that lead to
recruiting success. What are these critical metrics?
Number of calls/Day and Market Connect Time
Managers know that if
they can focus their team on the Pareto principle things (that 20% of
activities that get 80% of the results), these two metrics are the most
important. It’s a fact: the top players in the recruiting world average
between 3.5 hours and 5 hours of phone time each day – the average being closer
to 4.0 hours.
Many players come and
go in recruiting, the ones that average 4.0 hours of connect time are the ones
that stay in the big leagues and have the ability to continue to improve their
game. The ones that do not succeed in their connect time, usually end up
a casualty of the game.
Being a new player in
the field of recruiting and initially logging four hours of market connect time
seems to be an insurmountable task. This is not as easy as it sounds and
goes back to the conditioning process and the critical metric of number of
calls per day. The first goal a manager should give a rookie is to plan
effectively to make a MINIMUM of 80 calls per day. Two key items here
–one, being effectively planned, and two, the word minimum.
I just came back from
an industry conference at the end of October and I can’t tell you how many
times I heard from the group…
“There is no way you can make 80 calls per day. You have
to source, do the research, find the numbers then make the call and have
quality conversations – all in about 8 hours? Impossible!”
I am sure that many of
you reading this article are thinking the same thing. The truth of the
matter is that most of the recruiting industry struggles with this concept
and it’s one of the main reasons why nine out of ten people don’t make it their
first year as a recruiter.
Yes, it would be
difficult to do the sourcing, research, and make calls at the same time.
This is where the “effective planning” comes in. A good manager
understands this and ensures that at the end of the day, his team spends the
time needed to develop an effective plan that allow for a minimum of 80 calls to
be made the next day. Typically, managers focus the team on planning for
following day’s recruiting at the end of the day around 4:00 pm.
This means everyone gets off the phone and works to prepare a solid call list,
making sure they have an effective plan for over 80 calls for the next
day. Most successful Recruiters have 100-125 calls ready before they show
up for work the next day. Verification and research is done during this time as
well. When a recruiter tries to create the plan and research while
recruiting, the day ends up completely unproductive.
When effective
planning is utilized and the call numbers have reached over 80 calls per day
consistently, the next thing a manager should do is to do is focus on Market
Connect time, the second key metric. It is quite normal that a new
recruiter will make lots of calls, often have poor quality conversations, and
see very little results. Just as rookies develop their stats as they get
more experience, the same holds true for new hires. The better the planning,
the more consistency in call volume and the better chance of quality
conversations developing that lead to increased skill and success.
Quality conversations
are the key to increasing Market Connect time as well bottom line
results. An inverse relationship happens with phone calls and market
connect time. Once the phone call numbers are being achieved on a weekly
basis, and then the focus moves to increasing the quality of the conversations
–which ends up increasing the length of the average phone call – which
eventually decreases the number of dials needed to make to hit the Market
Connect Time goals.
After we developed the
right habits to plan properly for the number of dials the next day and we start
hitting some strong Market Connect Time, we can start to focus on the other
activity or quantity metrics that will lead us to success.
Conversations
In the age of
technology in which we our living, it is somewhat ironic that it is easy to
create lists of numbers and to make a lot of dials and yet not get anyone on
the phone. Yes, we can develop the habit of making 80 calls per day but
if a recruiter never talks to someone, how will they ever get the chance to
present the wonderful opportunity they are so excited about? This is why
the next metric is so crucial. Actual conversations need to be measured
if we want to get results. A conversation simply means we connect live with
someone on the phone – a hiring manager, potential candidate, or potential
referral. During an average day, a manager wants to see 20 – 25 conversations.
Not only should
conversations be tracked but they should be categorized as well. It is
important to determine if the conversation is for marketing or for recruiting
and to establish the appropriate quantity of expectations for each. Experience
has taught us that it is often tougher to get a hold of a hiring manager or CEO
than it is a potential candidate. We look for our recruiters who do both
marketing and recruiting to have a minimum of five marketing presentations per
day and twenty candidate presentations. A presentation is a live
conversation, with a recruiter on the phone presenting an opportunity or a
candidate for an open position. Our expectations are for 20-25 conversations
per day with five being marketing presentations and 15-20 being recruiting
presentations. If a manager sees the numbers not being
achieved, then steps can be taken to improve the quality of the presentation,
the target people we are calling or the recruiter’s techniques involved with
generating interest. Recruiting is still a selling game; sometimes we
need more sizzle to generate interest.
Quality Candidates
Assuming the Recruiter
makes enough calls during the day and is able to have several live
conversations where presentations can be made, the goal is to generate interest
attract candidates to the opportunity that is available. From the 15-20
recruiting presentations achieved each day, a minimum of 1-2
qualified candidates should be identified. Depending on the market and the
experience of the recruiter, this number could vary but 1-2 QC’s per day
should be the industry expectation. A quality candidate (QC) is a candidate
that matches the position requirements and is interested in pursuing the new
opportunity presented. If QC numbers are not being achieved,
it is easy for the manager to evaluate the metrics to determine what is
falling short. Is the presentation solid? Is it being articulated in
a way to generate interest? If the presentation is good, the next
step would be to verify the number of calls per day to ensure there is enough
activity on the go to hit the desired amount of conversations.
Job Orders
Just like the
expectations set for recruiting presentations, there should be targets
in place for expected results from making Marketing Presentations. Though there
are several goals for a marketing presentation, the ultimate objective is to
get a Job Order. Out of five marketing conversations each day, we
set a minimum expectation of getting one new job order, one per day.
These initial job orders are often not of good quality and most probably
should not be worked on, but in measuring the quantity that is generated
directly from presentations it provides a great tool for measuring the
effectiveness of our marketing presentations to hiring managers.
Mapping “EPOEJO” Calls
Another valuable
quantity metric that provides essential insight in to quality is the Mapping or
“EPOEJOE” call. I call it a matching and presenting call made to the
hiring manager. If you have been in this business for several years, you
may recognize it as the Employer Presentation on Existing JobOrder call.
This call differs from
most where recruiters have a brief conversation and then forward a resume of a
candidate that may be a fit in hopes of getting an interview. A Mapping
call is when you phone the hiring manager – review the job specifications again
and then do a presentation on a candidate or group of candidates.
The premise behind this – is that resumes do not cover all aspects of a
person’s career, knowledge, or experience.
The mapping calls
share the specifics of how the candidate or candidates meet the job
requirements in detail with your Hiring Manager. This goes a long way to ensure
your quality candidates get interviews.
The number of mapping
calls is in direct proportion to the number of Quality Candidates
presented. The target number for this quantity metric is five mapping
calls per week. Again, these calls are specific and not just an email sent with
a resume attached and a prayer that interviews will magically happen.
Mapping calls directly correlate to sendouts. The more mapping calls
made, the higher the percentage of sendouts.
Send outs
A sendout is a result
of all the quantity metrics outlined thus far. Sendouts tell us many things.
They let us know if the job order we are working on is good, they can tell us
our quality of candidates we are submitting and how good are our matching
skills are. Sendouts lead to placements and placements lead to
money. Managers need to work with team members to set individual sendout
goals based on each person’s income objectives and they should also establish
minimum levels of expectations. A strong minimum is five first time
sendouts per week. Why five? The average new recruiter’s sendout out to
placement ratio is 10:1. With five sendouts per week, the law of averages
says that will translate in to two placements per month. If the quality
is great – it may lead to three, if the quality is poor, however – it may just
be one. The quantity activity metrics discussed are heavily dependent and
correlated to the Ratio metrics, which will be outlined in-depth next month.
Placements
Placements are the “W”
in the recruiting world. Without placements, recruiting firms and
recruiters struggle to stay in business. Nine times out of ten, by making two
placements per month, a recruiter at any firm remains profitable.
_________________________________________________________________________
Recruiting is a tough
business and there is a lot to learn and do. No matter what is taught
however, the industry as a whole needs to acknowledge the true value of the
metrics that measure quantity activity as an integral part of the
process. The trend has been to use technology as an excuse rather than a coaching technique to assist the
players to increase their averages.
Our teams need to be
conditioned in the beginning to do enough business to actually stay in
business. Most recruiters go out of business too early, due to not having
an adequate volume of business to sustain them. It’s time to put a solid
game plan in place. It starts with 80 calls per day and then quickly
moves to four hours of market connect time per day. Once those numbers
are mastered, the focus shifts to ensuring that there are enough conversations,
quality candidates, job orders, and send outs to make the placements.
Once the volume of business is there, and only when it is there, can we take it
to the next level and work on quality?
