2011 Corporate Recruiting Reports

Recruiter Workload

Recruiter Workload

© Staffing.org, Inc., 2011. All Rights Reserved. Published by Staffing.org, Inc., Rowayton, CT, USA No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1876 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to Staffing.org. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be sent by mail to: Permissions, Staffing.org, Inc., 10 Burchard Lane, Rowayton, CT, USA 06853 +1 203-227-0186 or by email to: [email protected] Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publishers and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this Report, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this publication and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with independent advisors where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. To ask a question about this report, to contact the author, or to report a mistake in the text, please contact Susan Earle at [email protected].

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Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................... 4   What and How to Measure ................................................................................ 6   Begin With What You Know ............................................................................ 7   Efficiency Ranking ......................................................................................... 10   Recruiting Cost Ratio (RCR) .......................................................................... 11   Time ................................................................................................................. 12   Quality ............................................................................................................. 12   The ROI of Quality .......................................................................................... 14   Rating Recruiters on Quality ......................................................................... 20   Adjusting Recruiter Workload ......................................................................... 21   Management Approaches .......................................................................... 21   Workload Variables ....................................................................................... 24   Table of Variables .......................................................................................... 25   An Assessment Tool ....................................................................................... 28   What the Future Holds ...................................................................................... 33   Recruiter Workload—A Worrisome Case .................................................... 38   Sample Forms ................................................................................................... 41  

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Recruiter Workload

Introduction •

What’s the right requisition load for a recruiter?

•

How do I respond to management when they ask me to defend my staffing levels?

•

What’s the most efficient way to handle seasonal staffing variations?

The good news is that all three questions have solid answers that will satisfy any CFO; the less good news is that the answers aren’t simple. What kind of candidate are you looking for? What’s the state of the labor market? What technology are you using? How aggressive is the competition? How experienced is your recruiter? And so on. There are dozens of relevant questions. How your company calculates recruiter workload says a good deal about how it views recruiting overall. If it subscribes to the assembly line piecework model, then it will believe that a reasonably competent recruiting team, working within a reasonably functional recruiting environment, ought to own valid workload and output measurements against which both individuals and the department could be evaluated over time. In the world of standardized piecework, that expectation is perfectly reasonable. The obvious question is whether requisitions represent standardized piecework or whether they represent another kind of work altogether, something more like custom tailoring: a set of skills applied to tasks that can vary widely depending on the situation and the customer. Every experienced recruiter we know rejects the piecework model. Even in situations where they deal with large numbers of similar job requisitions,

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there are variations that make the job more difficult one day, less difficult the next. These could be internal (hiring managers, timetables, compensation, communication, process) or external (labor supply, economic conditions, or competition). Is it possible to take work that varies considerably from assignment to assignment, from job level to job level and from geography to geography, and create a logical framework for managing the people who have to do it? With a bit of effort, yes.

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What and How to Measure Here are some statistics compiled a few years ago by a respected recruiting firm. By themselves, they aren’t much more than a starting point because all context is absent. We don’t know whether we’re recruiting barbers, bookkeepers or baseball players. However, they do illustrate two common problems: The first chart shows that workloads already vary tremendously, allowing room for a wide range of opinions as to the “right” number of requisitions per recruiter.

The second chart illustrates the relationship between candidate salary level, requisition workloads and hires. But these measurements also raise questions. The volume of hires appears out of sync with the volume of requisitions. In most departments they would decline in parallel but here

they don’t. Also, the volume of annual hires seems low across the board. (Only 11 hires a year at the $75,000 level?)

And what does that mean exactly? Are the recruiters working on 10 requisitions at a time with a 90-day average time-to-hire, or on 15 requisitions at a time with a 120-day average time-to-hire? Are they really only filling one-sixth of their requisitions in a year? What are the quality standards? The point we’re making is to beware of “standard” benchmarks, which are, at the end of the day, someone else’s metrics, not yours. Furthermore, in many cases we really don’t know how they were gathered, from whom, or what they actually mean.

Begin With What You Know So how do we arrive at what is fair, reasonable and rational? Start with what you already know. The most useful benchmarks you will ever see for your organization are those you develop internally over time. Industry benchmarks are helpful reference points, but they report average, not superior performance. Nor do they reflect the differences that can legitimately exist between outwardly

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similar companies that have different labor philosophies, different maturity levels, different job market reputations, different geographical constraints and different strategic plans. Starting with what you know means pulling together information you already possess but may never have organized and written down. Your recruiting staff knows a great deal about their workload: labor market conditions, which jobs are difficult to fill, which hiring managers are hard to please, which parts of the hiring funnel cause delays, which sources produce more candidates, and so forth. This is your starting point. Monthly Requisitions & Hires

Recruiter A

Recruiter B

Recruiter C

Recruiter D