Competencies for Recruitment Professionals: Measuring Their Efficiency and ROI!

Purpose:
For high growth organizations, attracting, hiring and retaining the right talent is critical. Add the right players to your team and you have a key source of competitive advantage. Attract the wrong talent and you will have difficulty meeting your strategic goals and objectives. “Hire a wrong person…who is not able to fit into an organization…he will leave, resulting in high attrition rate”. “Hire a person…give him wrong information…or misrepresent the policies of the companies and procedure and you will not even know what harm you have done to the organizations “public image” “.

Introduction

More than anybody else in HR Department the onus is high on “Recruitment Specialist”, he is like “companies” advertising manager. He must be well versed with the “Business” of the company, its strategies and policies. It is for him to keep himself updated with the latest skill sets, available in the market. It is for him to “keep” him self updated with the “Business Competitors” of the organization. Even the onus of “retaining people is on “Recruitment Specialist”. It is for them to find if the “person” will be able to fit into the “culture” of the organization.

4 P’s of Recruitment

Product
What positions are you trying to fill? What do you have to offer to potential candidates? Who else is trying to hire similar candidates and how can you gain a competitive advantage?

Price
How much are you willing to pay top quality candidates (e.g., salary and benefits, other costs associated with the hiring process)? Is this more or less than your competition?

Person
What is your target market? Who are you trying to hire? What competencies are needed for the jobs you have to fill? Are these competencies valid? What does the ideal candidate look like?

Promotion
Where can your ideal candidates be found? How will you let these candidates know about your job openings and encourage them to apply? What resources can you use to generate a diverse candidate pool?

Searching for “Right” profile

1.Networking - Developing relationships with institutions that have direct or indirect access to culturally diverse candidates

2. Internet - Searching web databases, placing ads at various career sites geared toward a diverse array of individuals, attending on-line career chats

3.Resume Services - Purchasing a packet of resumes that match identified hiring criteria and contain a significant level of diversity.

4.Direct Mail Campaign - Systematically sending recruitment materials to culturally diverse individuals who meet your hiring criteria and organizations that have access to such individuals.

5.Job Fairs - Participating in job and career fairs that cater to culturally diverse job seekers.

6.Newspaper/Periodical Advertising - Placing job ads in periodicals that cater to culturally diverse individuals.

7.Radio & Television Advertising - Placing job ads on shows that cater to culturally diverse individuals.

8. Professional Associations - Becoming actively involved in a professional association that caters to underrepresented members of a particular profession

Recruitment: Return on Investment (ROI)

Recruitment return on investment (ROI) understands and compares the elements, costs and risks of a recruitment related project to the expected benefits, for example; recruitment technology, recruitment centre implementation or process re-engineering.

Recruitment ROI can assist in building a business case for the organization’s decision makers to evaluate the benefits and estimated return on the investment to upgrade an organization’s recruitment function.

In summary, the recruitment ROI process would address the following:

1. Tangible and intangible benefits to the organization, including increased quality and savings in time and money through implementation

2. Estimated cost of services and associated technology

3. Investment/payback period of the recruitment project

4. Issues and costs associated with not proceeding with the recruitment project

Measuring the Effectiveness of Recruitment Process

Collecting data and calculating the ratios is only the first step. Metrics are a tool for a larger analysis of your recruiting effectiveness.

Metrics don’t just mean time and cost. It’s about looking for every point of transaction with a candidate and tracking it from the time and cost perspective—every activity that pulls a candidate into the process and the path that takes the candidate through to an accepted offer.

Recruitment metrics measure the effectiveness of the recruitment function. These metrics deliver valuable and relevant information back to business stakeholders. Their purpose and benefits are to:

1. Demonstrate the real value of the recruitment function

2. Gain the buy-in of business decision makers to invest in and optimize the recruitment function

3. Provide an accurate picture of current costs and outcomes

4. Demonstrate changes and impacts to the organization over time

5. Establish shared accountability between the Recruitment Centre, Hiring Managers and/or business units

6. Manage costs

7. Analyze productivity

8. Assist in the identification and evaluation of risks

A good Recruitment Specialist must be in a position to answer the following questions:

A. How much time and expense does your administrative staff expend to open, respond, and route resumes to the hiring team? The best way to do this is to figure out an average cost per resume and track how many resumes you receive for each job to be able to calculate the administrative cost per job.

B. How much time does your hiring team / recruiter spend screening through resumes? This may also be an average cost per resume received for the job.

C. If your organization conducts preliminary phone interviews, how many were conducted and how much time was spent by the recruiter to prepare, conduct, summarize and communicate the results of those interviews?

D. Do you have an automated applicant-tracking program? This is an indirect cost that you may choose to pro-rate across your hires for a specific period of time, somewhat like depreciating a new computer on your taxes.

E. Did your hiring team or the interviewee incur any travel expenses that were reimbursed by the company?

F. How much time was spent scheduling interviews?

G. How many staff members were involved in the interviews? How long per interview? How many interviews? What is the average cost of the interviewers’ time

H. How much time and what was the cost for follow-up with candidates during negotiations and to notify those that were not hired?

I. What was the cost of referral fees from a recruiting agency or an employee referral?

J. What costs will the company be paying for the new hire to relocate? Some costs may include moving company, airplane tickets, hotel accommodations, temp housing, house hunting visits, assistance with sell/buy, or spouse/dependent assistance.

K. What was the cost for background investigations and/or reference checks? Drug screens?

L. If there was a signing bonus, how much was it?

M. What costs does the company typically incur to bring someone onboard – orientation, mentor, benefits enrollment, computers, cell phones, uniforms, etc.?

N. How long did it take to fill the position from start to hire date? What could you have done to reduce the time to hire and not have impacted the quality of the hire?

O. What was the impact on productivity while the position was left vacant? This is a very difficult calculation to conduct especially depending on the position. However, it does have an impact on the hiring manager and the organization as a whole. If it can’t be quantified, at least keep it in mind.

P. How satisfied was the hiring manager / organization with the hire? This assessment can be done following the hiring but should be repeated again 3 – 6 months after the employee has been on the job to get a real sense of how successful the hire was.

Calculations for Recruitment Specialist

Cost per Hire:
(Cost per hire is a calculation you can use any time you are hiring. Let’s say you are a consulting firm bidding on a big project. Cost per hire can help you estimate the costs associated with adding new positions as part of being awarded the contract for the new project.)

Costs involved with a new hire
[Advertising + Agency Fees + Employee Referrals + Travel + Relocation + Recruiter Pay & Benefits] /Number of Hires

Turnover Cost:
Costs incurred when an employee leaves the organization Cost to Terminate + Cost per Hire + Vacancy Cost + Learning Curve Loss (Note: Cost to terminate includes severance, unemployment, exit interviews, legal fees, temp replacements, etc)

Turnover Rate:
Measures rate that employees leave an organization [No. of Separations During Month ÷ Average No. of Employees During the Month] x 100

(Note: Define what status of employee you will monitor. It might not make sense, for example, to monitor temporary employees. It could skew the statistics for your full-time staff and lead you to false conclusions. Consider conducting a position-specific analysis)

Time to Fill:
Number of days from job requisition approval to new hire starts date Total Days to Fill Requisitions /Number Hired

Conclusion

For a Recruitment Professional to be efficient and effective, there is so much to do. They can play an important role in “Organization Transformation”, provided they are “true an fair” in their dealings. I have also mentioned in one of my “earlier write-up” that “Recruitment Professional” are corrupt, there is a good and bad face of each profession, all that is matter is how true you are to yourself and your integrity.

I will be looking forward to your comments and feedback.

Feel free to shoot any question, pertaining to this article.

Stay in Touch and take Care

Sanjeev Himachali
E-mail: ss_himachali@yahoo.com; sanjeev.himachali@gmail.com
Blog: http://sanjeevhimachali.blogspot.com/

You can read my ITES-BPO related articles at http://www.bpoindia.org/research/ or http://www.contactcenterworld.com/articles.asp

Sanjeev (Himachali) Sharma, is a 29 yrs of age from India, having six years of experience in "Human Resource Development". By qualification, he is Bachelor of Science and Masters in Business Administration. He is also a Motivational and Inspirational writer and speaker.)