The most strategic recruiters know that you need to proactively source candidates if you want to hire the best talent. They know that “spraying and praying” will produce volume, but that most will be average or under-qualified. By sourcing candidates instead, you are in complete control of the quality of talent in your pipeline.
Candidate Sourcing Metrics and KPIs
As you increase your sourcing efforts, you may find that your traditional recruiting metrics suffer. For example, time to hire will increase as you engage candidates before they’re actively looking, and you may have fewer candidates interviewing at any given time. In the end, though, you’ll see a much higher quality of candidates going through your recruitment process.
To accurately measure the performance of your strategic recruiting efforts, track these three candidate sourcing metrics to measure performance:
1. Candidate Pipeline Speed
A sourced candidate’s time to hire should not be tracked from the time they’re entered into your ATS, as happens with regular applicants who come in ready to interview. A sourced candidate often needs to be nurtured, so track your talent pipeline speed instead – the time it takes to hire a candidate from the first interview, all the way through to offer acceptance.
Pipeline speed should remain fairly consistent, although it may vary based on the candidate’s needs or extra requirements for certain positions. If you see that your talent pipeline speed is increasing over time, or that pipeline speed for a specific candidate is longer than average, find out why. It’s important to track this sourcing KPI metric in real-time, so you can immediately address any problems and optimize for a faster process.
2. Phone Interview and Screen Feedback
It doesn’t matter how many candidates enter your system every month if they’re not a good fit. Instead of measuring sheer volume, track sourcing metrics that are indicators of pipeline quality, like the percentage of positive phone screen feedback.
Sourced candidates essentially come pre-screened. You’ve vetted their work on sites like GitHub or Dribbble, and can familiarize yourself with their experience thanks to LinkedIn. As such, you should expect to screen fewer candidates with any red flags, and see a higher percentage of positive feedback scores. This will save your team time and ensure that their efforts are focused on selling qualified candidates, instead of screening under-qualified ones out. If your sourced candidates aren’t qualified enough to make it through your phone screen stage, you may need to reevaluate your sourcing process and make sure everyone understands the qualities to look for. [Read More: Phone Interview Questions to Ask]
3. Interview to Offer Conversion Rate
When your pipeline is just average, you might interview candidate after candidate before you extend an offer. When you have a pipeline of high quality sourced candidates, you can expect your interview to offer extension rate to go up.
Keep in mind that interview to offer conversion rate is a helpful sourcing metric of the quality of your pipeline for roles that you continually hire for. If you can only hire one employee for a specific role, it doesn’t matter how many fantastic candidates you have, you can only extend an offer to one.
Conclusion: Candidate sourcing metrics and KPIs
Sourcing is a different way to recruit, and therefore calls for different metrics than do traditional recruitment processes. Spending more time sourcing and interviewing fewer candidates may seem scary at first, but you will see a higher quality of candidates in your pipeline and ultimately, on your team.
For tips on the best sources of candidates, and ways to nurture your talent pipeline, download our free e-book “How to source a quality candidate pipeline”.