How do you know if your recruiting sources are effective?

To figure out if your hiring methods are working well, you need to keep an eye on a few important things. Look at how many and how good the job applicants are from different places you use to find them. Check how long it takes to fill a job and how much it costs to hire someone. Keep track of where the people you hire, heard about the job, and ask them for feedback. This information can give you good hints. You should also see how long people stay in the job and if there's a mix of different kinds of people applying. Using tools like data analysis and systems that help manage applicants can help you understand all of this. This way, you can decide which ways of finding new employees work best for your company.

Determining the effectiveness of your recruiting sources is crucial for optimizing your recruitment strategy & allocating resources efficiently. Here are several ideas to help you evaluate the effectiveness of recruiting sources: Track & Analyze Conversion Rates, Assess Time-to-Hire, Monitor Cost/Hire, Analyze Quality of Hires, Utilize Source Tracking Tools, Evaluate Referral Programs, Track the diversity & inclusion of hires from various sources to ensure your recruitment efforts align with diversity goals, Analyze past recruitment data to identify trends & patterns in successful hires from different sources, Compare your recruitment metrics with industry benchmarks to see how your recruiting sources stack up against industry standard.

It involves a multi-faceted approach to gather meaningful insights. First, delve into the data to understand the sources generating the most applicants. Then, closely monitor crucial metrics like conversion rates, time-to-fill, and cost per hire to gauge how efficiently your sources are delivering qualified candidates. Don't overlook the importance of candidate and employee feedback; it provides valuable insights into the candidate experience and source effectiveness. Aligning your diversity goals with sourcing efforts and tracking long-term trends ensures that your recruitment strategy remains forward-thinking. Lastly, seek input from hiring managers to fine-tune your approach based on their firsthand experiences.

There are several factors we can look while we evaluate the effectiveness of our recruiting process and I guess there are some universal criteria's such fill ratio, time to fill, rejection ratio(interview/offer), quality of hire, Cost etc. we also need to look at if the process itself is a quality experience for the person being hired and not a burden as it impacts on all the other factors. Taking feedback from both candidates and hiring managers and utilizing that feedback to adjust your strategy towards a long term goal is also important.

Sourcing is a waste of time if we dont see candidates moving to second calls with our hiring managers. Why would we spend a day sourcing 30 people who will be rejected at first glance. My approach is always understand well the JD and after that, take 3 profiles from people from within the company who are already doing the job and checking on their skills, soft and hard. In that sense, my sourcing can be theorical based on the JD but also practical based on the actual observation of real employees.

While having a plan on the paper is always great, it's equally important to track the performance against the plan. Some of the key metrics which indicate the health of the hiring process are Sourcing to interview conversion, Interview rejection ratio, Time to Fill, Time to Offer, Candidate experience survey score & offer to joining ratio etc...

To effectively track your metrics you need to take a long-term view - time to hire, and cost per hire aren't effective if those hires subsequently leave after a short period of time. Cost needs to be measured as a return on investment. Internally it might seem like a failure that you've used a search partner for a particular senior or niche role, however, measure it against the ROI over 6,12,18 months and actually, you might find it's not a cost but more of an investment that has paid itself back several times over already.

Since each job has different skill or competence requirement, it would not be prudent to compare job hiring for different skills. An intra-skill comparison would make more sense as it would bring out metrics more vividly for same jobs. Also, its important to assess what is attracting people to your job marketing, what got them knocking in the first place. Surely, we dont want to attract a lot that is not likely to stay long for a regular role. Assessing costs is significant in medium/low skill hiring since the skill is not specialized to incur high costs. Additionally, optimizing each channel, its related costs, turnaround time etc should be well studied and an optimum level should be reached on each defined metric.

Time to hire/fill isn’t always a great indicator of performance, as some roles are harder to fill than others due to lack of available talent, or a niche, specialist skill set. Understanding the channels that are delivering quality candidates is essential though, as it may highlight some improvement areas in your process. Also remember to ask candidates how they heard about the job - they may have applied directly having heard about it from someone they know internally. The data doesn’t always show all the touch points your new hires have before entering the process.

With expanding technology we have a great opportunity to be able to track and measure recruitment metrics, like source, time to fill, cost to fill, quality of hire, etc. When investing in your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) be sure you are talking about the robust reporting system that is included. This will help automate the metrics that can be pulled at any time. Then look at the metrics to determine where there are inefficiencies in your process. Take the time to define and create solutions.

When we discuss sources of recruitment, it starts from previous experience of hiring so we strongly believe in comparing with previous hiring and we will set that as a benchmark. The feedback of the previous hire help us for considering the future hire and other plans

I also think this is where a trusted agency partner can help. Asking questions such as “what are candidates saying about us/our process?” “How does our time to hire compare to our competitors?” Etc Understanding why people may not be applying is equally as important as understanding what’s working.

Additionally, assess the alignment of recruiting sources with your employer brand. Consider how each source represents your organization and its values. Analyze if they attract candidates who resonate with your company culture and mission. An effective recruiting source not only provides candidates but also enhances your employer brand and reputation. By ensuring consistency between your brand and recruiting sources, you create a more appealing and cohesive candidate experience, which can lead to better hiring outcomes and talent retention.

When we discuss comparing I guess if you work individually you can compare yourself to set a benchmark of your work, it helps always to see your past work and set a new benchmark on your goals with new strategies. on this, The feedback of the previous hire helps us consider the future hire and other plans

Context is always important, so it is key to analyze the data in terms of market conditions, some departments or positions are more likely to have better candidates than others which can affect how your source performs for specific industries, departments or positions. Actually, consider how your source works for different segments is a big picture indicator to avoid perception biases regarding effectiveness.

I've found that various tools serve distinct purposes in my experience. While LinkedIn stands out as the most versatile tool for talent acquisition, Dice proves to be exceptional for recruiting high-level technical talent, such as Senior Software Developers specializing in ERP. On the other hand, Career Builder shines when it comes to filling more entry-level positions, particularly in roles like helpdesk support.

Consider candidate feedback as part of your optimization efforts. Solicit input from candidates regarding their experience with different recruiting sources. Understand their preferences, what resonated with them, and what could be improved. This feedback loop can provide valuable insights into the candidate perspective, helping you refine your sourcing strategies to align better with candidate expectations and preferences, ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of your recruiting sources in attracting top talent.

Testing and experimenting with your recruitment channels, both inbound and outbound, is essential to developing a successful Talent Acquisition function. Understand where your candidates are coming from by tracking the source of each application within your application process. Knowing the percentage of applicants from each recruiting source allows you to know where to invest more resources, and also identifies areas of potential improvement. For more organic recruitment marketing methods, place parameters around your testing to ensure that you can track how much engagement was generated, how many leads were created, and how many new hires that it led to.

experimenting, finding a solution, and practicing it again and again, finding more problems, finding more solutions, until the experiment becomes your success and the major contributor to your hiring needs. that's how you optimize your 1 source , same you can do with other sources, to have n no of weapons in your arsenal

It is better to analyze each source separately as the inflow from different sourcing channels will be different. Assess the funnel utility separately and run an analysis to know the performance. Each funnel will be unique in its way, some will provide volume, some will provide quality, some might be a mix & match and some might add to your DEI initiatives only. Source health checks are required to monitor the performance of your channels and measure its efficiency which ultimately gives the desired data measuring Funnel Leakage, Time to Fill, Time to Offer, Candidate experience survey score & offer to joining ratio.

Source-Specific Surveys: You should consider conducting surveys or interviews with new hires to determine how they learned about the job and why they chose to apply. This can provide insights into which sources are most influential.

Bottom line, if you aren't sourcing QUALIFIED candidates through a recruiting source, it isn't working. Period. Without a good candidate (or ideally more than one) coming from your recruiting efforts, it's a failure. Focus on EMOTIONAL branding. Emotional trigger points are much more likely to convince a QUALIFIED candidate to make an action—in this case submitting an application. From there, A/B test until you have a winning recruiting source. Then repeat that across all sources (what works on LinkedIn is likely to work on other sites as well).

The recruiting source is a key tool for the recruitment process but is not the all-answers tool, you have to make sure that your tool named "recruitment source" is aligned with your employer branding strategy and all other marketing efforts in order to offer a full TA strategy instead of an all-star unique solution expectation.

rest all post was what works for recruiting. it's better to do nothing than waste your time finding candidates, to your less contributing sources.