7 Metrics That Really Matter When Volume Hiring

Ask any budding entrepreneur for what they need the most, and you will get the answer along with the lines, “we want talented people and we need them fast’’.

Even a well-established company that laid out strategies for rising can find themselves scrambling without the right workforce in the face of fastest-growing competition, and expanding customer base.

To help the organization run smoothly, leaders excitedly recruit people from junior to senior positions to perform numerous functions. Particularly, in the case of start-ups, leaders furiously look towards their own networks, or post job vacancies, or let the recruiters explore the wider database in the hope of quick hiring. Looking through thousands of resumes or bringing in too many candidates on the interview table is the last way a founder wants to spend his time.

Meanwhile, volume hiring has its own set of challenges that are to be tackled differently than filling a one-off position. Perhaps, tracking a few recruitment metrics and improving upon them are the initial steps that leaders would take to ensure that their efforts don’t put a detrimental strain on the organization’s resources.

Well, now the question is framed this way. In the data-obsessed world, what metrics shall matter the most in volume hiring? Here are they:

1. Time Metrics

In volume hiring, the availability of time weighs. For each lost day, the organization is also losing revenue. As per a report by SHRM, the average time taken to fill a position is 42 days. Ideally, it is the length of time that starts from the first day of the job posting to the final day of offer acceptance. This metric offers a realistic view for leaders to assess how fast the candidates in the pipeline are moving to hit the company’s hiring goals.

Particularly for volume hiring, calculating the TTF (time taken to fill the positions) and then optimizing it will ultimately measure the hiring efficiency and improve the overall candidate experience.

2. Offer Acceptance Rate

Another Important metric is the rate of job offer acceptance by candidates. Such a rate is calculated by dividing the number of accepted offers by the total job offers extended by the recruiters. Its value indicates that up to which extent your efforts are meeting your hiring targets. If this rate occurs low, you shall re-look at your approach and fix the problems.

Recruiters understand that merely filling the candidate pipeline with the applicant is not their target. Importantly, their job gets done ‘well’ when maximum candidates are accepting their offer.

3. Job Application Time

This high recruitment metric is calculated by knowing the time required by a candidate to fill the job application. If the application is complex or has multiple steps paired with the slow functioning website then lesser applicants will turn up.

More likely, most of them would refrain from applying or leave it mid-way. As per a study, the applicant’s count can rise over 300% when the application time is 5 minutes or shorter. To leverage, make the application shorter and sweeter. Whenever it becomes necessary to keep it in layers, ensure that the applicants can save and retrieve information with each step.

4. Cost Involved Per Applicant

Undeniably, cost and quality aspects have varied versions depending on each hiring organization. As such, it certainly impacts their business bottom line and goals. Conventionally, recruiters’ salaries, and advertising costs, followed by the cost of screening and interviewing are calculated against each quality hire. Doing so will enable you in fixing benchmarks for measuring the cost incurred per hire.

5. Utility Metrics

Further, organizations also calculate the selection ratio by comparing the number of candidates hired with the total number of candidates. It helps them to measure and evaluate the utility of the recruitment tool or model or process in practice, identify loopholes and therefore, facilitate prediction followed by decision making.

6. Source of Hire

From where do you get the most authentic talent? Yes, it can be either internal or external or both sources. But all sources cannot perform equally well in all situations. Particularly, for filling the volume of positions, recruiters cannot simply rely on either of the aforesaid pool. They would look for an ‘all-inclusive’ way out. However, calculating ‘source of hire’ metrics enable them to identify which source performs in what way in the given situation. It facilitates their decision-making in identifying which ‘source to resort to’ for all future hiring purposes.

7. Return on Investment

In business, calculating ROI or turnover makes sense every time, and of course, recruitment is not an exception. It let the hiring team judge all the cost, time, and energy that they comprehensively put into performing volume hiring.

Essentially, in the data-focused world, you have to learn to play with stats and must love at least this much of mathematics. Well, it’s high time to sit with numbers and calculators to set the right benchmarks.