It could be said that recruiting is a numbers game. In fact, it has been said that recruiting is a numbers game. That’s why recruitment metrics are so vitally important for search consultants. You’ve probably heard this saying before: “If you can’t measure it, then how can you improve it?” That definitely applies to recruitment ratios.
Recruitment ratios: measure what matters
That’s because recruitment ratios pertain directly to how many placements a recruiter or a recruiting agency makes. Once you measure the ratios, you can improve them by placing an emphasis on those areas that make the most sense. You’ve probably also heard this saying before: “Do what matters the most.” That also pertains to recruitment ratios. Tracking, measuring, and adjusting the right numbers helps you to do what matters most on your recruiting desk.
And what matters most is to make those placements as quickly as possible to generate those placement checks.
But this raises some important questions, starting with this one: which recruitment ratios should search consultants be tracking? And how should they track them?
To help answer these questions, we’re going to draw upon the wisdom of recruiting industry trainer Jon Bartos of Revenue Performance Management. Bartos is a premier writer, speaker, and consultant on all aspects of personal performance, human capital, and the analytics behind them.
According to Bartos, to improve your skills and increase your recruiting revenue, understand and pay attention to the primary recruitment ratios. These are the metrics that tell you how good you are at every integral part of the game.
The primary ratios apply to marketing, recruiting, matching skills, and quality of job orders. These four key elements and corresponding recruitment metrics constitute 99% of the recruiter goals you need to master to reach any level of success in recruiting.
According to Bartos, below are four recruitment ratios for increasing your revenue as a search consultant:
1. Marketing Primary Ratio (New Marketing Presentations/Job Orders)
This critical metric tells you how good you are at marketing. It indicates how many marketing presentations you have to make to get a job order. It measures your effectiveness on giving sales or marketing presentations to your clients.
If this ratio is anything above 5/1, it needs help. To see improvement in this area, increase your skills with additional training on how to give better marketing presentations. Improving your marketing skills will lead to an increase in the number of job orders. The more job orders, the better the potential to weed out the bad ones, so you only work the ones where you are guaranteed a placement if you find the match.
Maximizing your marketing skills and reducing your ratio in this area alone will help you to build business immediately. Shoot for a 2/1 NMP/JO ratio.
2. Recruiting Primary Ratio (Candidate Presentations/Quality Candidates)
Similar to the metric above, this key metric tells you how good you are at recruiting. It reveals how many candidate presentations are needed in order to obtain a quality candidate. The better your skills at recruiting (pinpointing and calling the right people), the lower this ratio. Anything above 5/1 is a big problem. The goal is to be at 3/1 or optimally 2/1.
There are two facets to consider. The first is that you have to spend time calling the “right” people. This requires 1.) investing time in research and planning to have the ability to eliminate the majority of non-applicable candidates up front, and 2.) the ability to sell the opportunity once the right person is on the phone.
If everyone for whom you conduct a recruiting presentation is interested in your opportunity, you’re definitely on the right track. The question is, how do you get to that level? Having the ability to sell is critical. Take time to role play and evaluate your current presentation. Are you still in the habit of regurgitating the job description with a few added words of enticement? That is so “old school.”
Make it personal. Take time to sell the future. Share with candidates how they can achieve their dreams based on this career move. Get good at painting a picture of how their goals and objectives will materialize with this opportunity and your effectiveness will increase overnight. Create a Picasso!
3. Matching Primary Ratio (Quality Candidates/Sendouts)
Even if you have exceptional marketing and recruiting skills, success will never be possible without the ability to match the candidate’s qualifications to the job requirements. Hopefully you’ve got recruiting software with an applicant tracking system that can expedite this process.
Matching skills are necessary to achieve any level of revenue production, but more importantly, they hold the key to increasing your recruiting revenue. The lower this ratio, the better you are at knowing exactly what your clients are looking for and providing them with the qualified candidates who meet those expectations. With that, you get a higher level of sendouts. And as we all know, sendouts are what make placements happen.
There are several ways to improve this ratio, but the first is to focus on truly understanding what your clients want, the specifics of what the job requires, the culture, and the goals and objectives of the hiring authority. What are the key must-haves for the position and what is the dream candidate for that job?
If this ratio is off track, this will be a quick indicator that you and your hiring manager may not be on the same page. The industry average for this ratio is 3/1, but realistically it should not be any higher than 2/1 and preferably 1.25/1 for maximum results.
4. Quality of Job Orders Ratio (Job Order/Placement)
The JO/PL ratio is a significant metric that shares with you the quality, or how good your job orders are.
To understand this ratio, when your JO/PL ratio is 10/1, this means you are working on 10 job orders but filling one. This equates to wasting 90% of your time. And we all know that time is such a valuable resource, it’s not an option to spend it without getting results.
Thus, in looking at all of the primary ratios, another way to dramatically improve your recruiting revenue is to make sure you are working on solid (qualified) job orders that will result in placements, not busywork. The more time you spend on good job orders directly affects how much your recruiting revenue will go up. It is a direct correlation: good job orders = more revenue.
Take time on the front end to get the detailed job order information you need. Then take it a step further to qualify the quality of the job orders you take with the job order matrix. This will enhance your production substantially. The industry average for this metric is 8/1. However, anything over 6/1 is a very serious concern. For contingency firms, a 3/1 ratio is the target number.
Increasing your recruiting revenue is NOT easy, as it requires change and change is difficult. The potential exists, though, and everybody has the opportunity to take advantage of it.
Top Echelon’s Training Library
Top Echelon offers a free monthly webinar as part of its Recruiter Coaching Series. After the webinars are over, we post the recorded version of the webinars in our Recruiter Training Library. These webinars touch upon a variety of recruiter-related topics. These topics deal with both candidates and clients. As always, our goal with these webinars (and corresponding videos) is to help recruiters make more placements.
Jon Bartos has multiple videos in the Top Echelon Recruiter Training Library. In addition, many of these videos deal with recruitment ratios and other metrics. Some of these videos are listed below. Click on the title of each video for access:
- “Creating a Culture of Performance by Using Metrics”
- “Maximizing Performance Using the Pareto Principle”
In addition to training and webinars, Top Echelon offers other recruitment solutions. These solutions include the following:
- Big Biller recruiting software
- Top Echelon split network
For more information about Top Echelon and the products and services that it offers, visit the Top Echelon website by clicking here.