The Easiest Way to Measure the Effectiveness of External Recruitment Efforts

March 4th, 2008 · No Comments

All Recruitment Consultants are Salespeople at heart. Sure, some may have an original background in HR, Psychology, Occupational Therapy, Training or even have held senior posts in ‘Industry’ – say Banking, Server Virtualisation, Digital Marketing or Wireless.

But, at the end of the day, Recruiters are ‘Opportunity Brokers’. Salespeople.

So, how do you trust a Salesperson? They arrive at your offices to meet you and discuss your needs, armed with shiny brochures and big promises, and you know what happened last time… that’s right. Expectations were high and delivery was awful.

We’d like to propose, for the benefit of our readership who make use of the Services of Recruitment Agents, Consultants or Executive Search firms, a very simple means to measure their effectiveness. In one question.

When you engage a recruiter with an assignment, you have a shortlist of candidates and you have booked the interview – at the meeting, simply ask the interviewee (maybe as an opener)

How has the service been from the Recruiter who sent you here?

This simple, open question will tell you more than you might expect. As long as you make the candidate feel that they can be open with you, despite the interview circumstances.

You will be able to validate

- Whether the Recruiter treated the candidate as a human being or a commodity.
- Whether the Recruiter was able to properly explain the role requirement/’value proposition’, and describe your business in regards to your technical IP, business direction, competitive landscape etc
- Whether the Recruiter has understood and been able to express (accurately) your Employer Brand.
- Whether the Recruiter has been efficient and professional at all times thus far in the process.
- Where the Recruiter sourced the candidate (Great Intelligence if you are looking to build up your strengths in terms of Internal Staffing)
- Whether the Recruiters agenda is to protect your reputation through a consultative approach, or not.

And finally, the candidate will most probably be glad that you ‘care’ enough to ask how they feel about their treatment in the Recruitment process thus far from your Supplier. In an ideal situation, your suppliers should be an extension of your HR/Recruiting function.

This is a great return on time investment and will give you a more accurate picture as to the service you are really paying for.

We asked for the opinion of someone on the front-line on this. Whilst he asked not to be named, he’s a Recruitment manager with extensive experience within corporates & start ups, plus prior experience as a supplier of permanent, contract, & executive search recruitment services. Does he do this? How does it help? Here’s his thoughts…

The questions I ask interviewees can include…

- What has your experience been of [recruitment company]?

- What company information have they provided you with? - a good way of checking what items from the vacancy briefing info are being used by the supplier.

- How did they find you? - as you say, a good way to identify the best sources of relevant candidates.

- How did they describe the company and/or this opportunity to you? – to gain a perspective on the supplier’s understanding of our opportunity & how they’re presenting it (& how the candidate has interpreted & remembered it).

- What specific aspects of their description of the opportunity did you most connected with? – to identify what candidates find most compelling about the venture company &/or career opportunity.

I end usually with a positive statement about why I use the supplier but regardless of my view of them I like to check on the candidate’s experience of being approached, pitched to & then represented on our opportunity.

If there are less than positive or outright negative comments from the interviewee on the supplier then I follow up with the agency.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that this individual happens to work in a Senior capacity for a world-renowned company who hire people *exceptionally* well.

But do all hiring companies currently do this? No they don’t. Why not?

Perhaps it’s because the distraction of the core interview purpose (Evaluate Candidate, Discuss Vacancy, etc) means it’s hard to justify extra time and effort exploring what kind of service they got.

Perhaps it’s because they don’t care.

Maybe it’s even because the Recruitment Market (Certainly here in the UK) has been so commoditized that you don’t even expect that the candidate has had an outstanding level of service.

We don’t really know.

Either way – next time you meet a candidate for an interview through a Recruiter – do yourself a favour – remember the question.

Oh, and by the way – keep a record of this feedback, ask the question often or always and tell you Recruiter what the candidate said about them. This will strengthen more KPI-oriented measurements (CV:Interview:Offer:Placement:Retention) via ratios and enable you to decide if you should keep, fine-tune or get rid of your Staffing Partners or Recruiters on your PSL.

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