Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/227268
Recruiting Karr points to a specific example. "We have a client that hires engineering professionals; it's a manufacturer," he says. "They have two different business units with very similar profiles. They are essentially looking for the same kind of people. But one of them had an overall time to hire that was upward of 15, 16 days different from the other one. Same geography, similar profiles … what gives?" Karr broke down the cycle times for time to hire by each step: HR can break out classic metrics to determine if there are bottlenecks and other kinds of problems in the recruiting process. This will help differentiate • How long to open the job? management and recruiting • How long to source the candidates? problems. • How long to present the candidates? • How long from present to interview? • How long from interview to offer? • How long from offer to accept? "What we found was that one group of hiring managers was taking upward of five to 10 business days longer to decide once they had met a good candidate. They were taking longer to decide to make an offer than the other group was," Karr explains." They were essentially blowing the curve." That offered a clear line of sight into the problem. "Invariably, as you know, any time you have long cycle times or time to hire is too long, everyone's finger points to sourcing," says Karr. "'We need to find better people; if we can find better people we will lower time to hire.' The reality of it is that's not always the case." In this case, the leader of the hiring team received some hiring consultation from within his organization on the need to make decisions in the absence of complete consensus. "Basically, what was determined was if they couldn't agree, they would just go back to the drawing board." That would inadvertently increase time to hire. Bottom line: HR can break out classic metrics to determine if there are bottlenecks and other kinds of problems in the recruiting process. This will help differentiate management and recruiting problems. [50] HRO TODAY MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 2013 6. Agency use The issue: HR invests in RPO, but still spends on thirdparty recruiters. Some of that may be necessary, but Karr says that more and more clients are expecting agency use to decrease. "Another metric we are seeing a lot of is third-party agency use," explains Karr. "This is where you are working on profiles that are very specialized, such as engineering or technology, or finance, or even higher level roles such as executive or management searches, director or VP level." "Organizations are very sensitive and we promote a tremendous amount of productivity that will be generated from our sourcing channels; there's a desire to connect that back to agencies. (In voice of client): 'You are saying you are going to bring us a very specialized sourcing architecture, we assume that we will see our agency use decline.' Measure that metric; it's just a raw number of agency hires as a percentage of the overall number of hires." Bottom line: Less third-party agency use cuts costs and eliminates cooks from the kitchen. Companies that don't want to pay for both RPO and executive recruiters (or reduce agency costs) will need to keep track of agency hiring trends.