Recruiting metrics are critical for any organization that wants to hire the right people quickly and efficiently. By tracking data points throughout the recruitment process, companies can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions that lead to better hiring outcomes. Some of the most common metrics that companies focus on are: Time to fill, Cost per hire, Quality of hire, Candidate diversity, etc. At RocketPower, we strive to help our clients exceed their goals for each of these metrics by bringing a best in class data driven approach throughout the recruiting process.

In a recent blog post, we covered the importance of recruiting conversion ratios and why it is critical to track and analyze them constantly to ensure the success of our recruiting initiatives (read here). In this post, we want to discuss time to hire and how measuring it can help you make data driven decisions to improve your hiring process.

Before diving into time to hire, let’s review the negative consequences of long time-to-fill cycles in recruiting:

Loss of top candidates:

Top talent in the market has many options. When a company's hiring process takes too long, top candidates may accept other job offers or lose interest in the role, causing the company to miss out on valuable talent.

Increased cost per hire:

The longer the recruiting process takes, the more resources the company needs to invest in job postings, people time (screens, interviews, debriefs, etc), and other recruitment tools. This can significantly increase the cost per hire.

Decreased morale among existing employees:

When positions remain vacant for a long time, existing employees are often required to take on additional responsibilities, leading to burnout and decreased morale.

Delayed business goals:

Unfilled positions can delay important business goals and initiatives, which can ultimately affect the company's bottom line.

Negative impact on employer brand:

A long time-to-fill cycle can create a negative perception of the company among potential candidates, which can hurt the company's employer brand and make it harder to attract top talent in the future.

Time to fill, cost per hire, and quality of hire are interdependent metrics that work together to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of a recruitment process, impacting other important metrics, such as hiring manager experience and candidate experience.

Time to hire measures the time it takes between a qualified candidate entering the recruiting process and this same candidate accepting the job offer. By tracking this metric, leaders can evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of the process and identify areas for improvement, including the performance of individual actors involved at each step. At RocketPower, we take it a step further by tracking and measuring the time it takes for every candidate, not just the ones who end up accepting the offer, to move through each recruiting workflow step. We then analyze the data to identify trends, and actors involved to then develop and implement solutions, and set SLAs that will drive efficiency. Ultimately, reducing time to fill and cost per hire, and improving candidate quality, candidate experience and hiring manager satisfaction.

Here are two scenarios that show the importance of our approach.

Scenario 1: An opportunity to add value

Earlier this month, we were invited to participate in a QBR with one of our new clients. During the portion of the QBR where the TA team was discussing the aged requisitions, we noticed the main focus of the conversation was around conversion ratios from the interview to offer stages. When we asked if they were measuring the time it took candidates to move from one stage to the next, it was clear that they were not. The conversations that followed were extremely interesting and have led to a plan focused on starting to track a candidate’s progress, to then be able to measure, analyze, and provide insights that will lead to drive the necessary change that will lead to our client improving their recruiting program.

Scenario 2: The RocketPower way

Last year, during our regular meetings with one of our RPO clients (a Software-as-a-Service startup), we were analyzing conversion ratios and noticed that the conversion rate between Panel Interview and Offer Extended for one of the LOBs (Lines of Business) was much lower than the other LOB. We suspected that the reason was because this LOB had a two day Panel Interview with the second day being a live sales presentation by the candidate, but we wanted to make sure and we agreed to dive deeper into the issue during the following week to identify what the problems were and come up with possible solutions to increase the conversion rate.

During the following 3 days, the recruiter assigned to that LOB worked with the recruiting manager and our data team to analyze the data pulled from our client’s ATS (Applicant tracking system). They were able to identify how long it was taking for the panel interviews to be scheduled, the different reasons why candidates were not passing the interview, the exact moment when candidates were opting out, and the reasons why they were opting out. In this case, we were able to confirm our suspicions. A lot of candidates were dropping out after the first day of the panel interview. However, we also identified that some candidates that attended the second day of the interview, were not making it through because they were not well prepared for the presentation.

With this information, our team worked with the LOB leader to adapt the Panel Interview to a one day interview and to ensure the recruiting team had the information needed to prepare the candidate for the presentation portion of the interview. The results were fantastic, over the next month we saw an increase in the conversion ratio, and in turn improving candidate experience, hiring manager experience and time to fill.

Our team was able to do this because the sourcers and recruiters were tracking candidate progress in the ATS in real time. This made it possible for our data team to pull a report with time stamps for each candidate journey through each of the recruiting workflow steps. Then our recruiting leaders were able to analyze this information and work with our client to create solutions which drove the necessary change to improve the hiring process and experience.

At RocketPower, we start tracking data at the very top of the recruiting funnel, to assess the health of the recruiting process and make data driven decisions that improve your organization’s hiring process, reduces your time to fill and cost per hire, increases your hiring manager and candidate experience. Which in turn increases your employee engagement and reduces your employee attrition rate.