Building a Recruiting Infrastructure

I’ve written a couple of posts on how companies can best engage with recruiters. There is a lot to consider when you’re bringing in an external consultant to complete the significant task of building your team. I recently had a conversation with a client where we discussed the importance of having recruiting “infrastructure.” I made several recommendations with the goal of helping them to be more organized and intentional during the recruiting and hiring process. I thought I’d pass along a few of my recommendations to our readers who may be struggling with rapid hiring and how to get ahead of the process.

Job Description Bank

In my first blog post on this topic, Working with Recruiters: For Companies, I talk about the importance of the job description in the intake process. Ideally, a complete list of responsibilities will help your recruiter to understand, up front, what the role entails and how it fits in with the rest of the organization.

Sometimes, companies don’t have a complete job description ready to go, in which case some additional work is required. A “bank” of job descriptions can make this process much easier; a central location where you can go to review past job descriptions for things like format, list of responsibilities that might relate to the new role and requirements for other related positions. You can then use these elements as a guide for the new job description you’re creating without having to reinvent the wheel each time.

It’s up to you how you create this job description bank. Maybe your organization has a shared drive, that will house a Job Descriptions folder. Online resources like Dropbox or Google Docs could be other options. Just make sure that:

1. You’ve organized everything in the way that makes most sense for your company. Some examples could be to group the job descriptions by department, by hiring manager or by entry/mid/senior level.
   
2. All applicable team members have access to the bank.
   
3. It stays up to date and current, based on any changes in roles, responsibilities or personnel.

Recruiting Metrics

Metrics provide optimal understanding of where a company has been and where they’re going. Specific hiring and recruiting metrics can give members of the recruiting team, both internal or external, excellent insight in to what methods have worked best in the past, and where to take things moving forward.

Some suggested metrics to track, starting today, are:

• Time to fill – Historically, how long has it taken your organization to fill an open position? This is important to know in order to determine how successful past strategies were and to anticipate how long current positions will take to fill.
  
• Passive vs. active candidates – As I explored in Working with Recruiters: 3 More Tips for Companies, most companies state that they want passive candidates, but very few really have what it takes to encourage talent to leave their current role. Many times, this metric can measure how well a company is attracting talent.
  
• Retention rate – So, you’ve got the candidates, but can you keep them? Retention shows how well you hired – did you choose the right candidates and have you created an environment where talented people want to stay?

Make sure that you have a system in place for tracking and recording these metrics. Year over year, this insight will help your organization to better inform and improve your hiring.

LinkedIn Recruiter

LinkedIn Recruiter is an excellent tool, especially if your company has, or is planning to implement, a passive candidate recruiting strategy. According to a recent poll, it’s a client favorite!

Additionally, and getting back to metrics, if your organization (or your recruiter) has access to LinkedIn Recruiter during the recruiting process, you have access to some really excellent reports and analytics that help to better manage the recruiting process and utilize the Recruiter tool:

• Recruiter Usage – This report shows basic metrics regarding the frequency and how Recruiter is being used, including daily logins, number of searches performed and number of profiles viewed.
  
• Pipeline Analytics – Of the profiles viewed, this set of analytics represents the profiles that the user has taken some action on; essentially who is “in process” in some way.
  
• Job Analytics – The Job Analytics numbers are super helpful in determining how well your job posts are doing; are they written well, have they gotten a good amount of views and applies and have they been search-optimized so that candidates can find them?
  
• InMail Analytics – This report breaks down the effectiveness of the messaging. Are people responding,? Are they accepting your InMails? This is an important metric for a strong passive recruiting strategy.

Putting these elements into place is the beginning of building the recruiting infrastructure that will help your company and its recruiting partner(s) get ahead of the game. What measures has your company already taken to create these resources? A little strategy and the right tools can go a long way.

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