How to Measure if Your In-House Recruitment Strategy is Working

Some in-house recruitment teams have a hiring process that, on the surface, looks to be successful, but how often do employers dig down to measure how effective the 
procedure is. 

There is so much more to recruitment than ‘filling positions’. It’s a marathon rather than a sprint, and the most successful hires are those that continue to add value as time goes on. 

Have you found your in-house recruitment team hiring for the same roles repeatedly? 

In the U.K., 27% of companies say a bad hire costs more than £50,000, with the overall impact of making the wrong hiring decision permeating throughout your organisation, damaging productivity and, ultimately, revenue. 

It would help if you tracked whether your in-house recruitment strategy is working – today, we look at the critical things to consider. 

 

1. Time to Fill 

The time it takes to fill a role is an essential key performance indicator of your recruitment process. Each of the following stages will have varying timescales: 

• Job posting  
• Lead generation
• Referral gathering
• Looking at C.V.s
• Phone screening
• In-person/video interview(s)
• Offer sent and accepted
• Start date agreed 

How long does it usually take from posting your job to onboarding your new finance employee? 

Gathering leads and increasing attraction to your job advert can take anything from a few days to a couple of weeks. It can then take an additional few days to sort through the applicants to find those with whom you want to speak. Phone screening and in-person or video interviews can then take up to another week, and the job offer and acceptance stage a further few days. 

Before you know it, your process can total over a month, with 28 days being the U.K. average, according to Workable.com. Suppose your time to hire regularly takes longer than this, or you find the process tends to break down at the same point, such as failing to attract quality candidates or losing candidates between the interview and the offer stage. In that case, this is a sign that your process needs some work.  

Remember, when companies have a ‘hard to fill’ position, often one or more of the elements I have outlined here is taking too long, resulting in candidate disengagement.  

 

2. Quality of Hires 

Are you regularly impressed with the level of finance candidates applying to your roles? 

As reported by the recruitment website The Muse, 76% of hiring decision-makers say that attracting quality candidates is their number one challenge. 

There are a couple of ways to measure if your quality of hires is at the desired level: 

• Use surveys to measure your hiring manager’s satisfaction 
• Speak to your team about how well your new hires can integrate and perform in their roles 
• Have robust 30, 60 and 90-day plans in place for new employees, which help document performance in the early stages.  

Next, let’s look at the importance of calculating the cost per hire. 

 

3. Cost Per Hire 

Calculating your cost per hire is a superb way to measure the success of your in-house recruitment. 

The typical way to calculate cost per hire is with the Standard for Human Resource Management (SHRM) model, taking the total expenditure on your internal recruitment divided by the number of recruits within any given timeframe. 

In large organisations with in-house recruitment teams where recruiting is a common occurrence, it can be easy to lose track of the cost per hire, but regularly reviewing this figure is a good idea to measure your recruitment process’s success.  

1. Applicant Satisfaction 

While your in-house recruitment team’s primary task is recruiting and onboarding new individuals, it goes deeper than that. 

Recruitment is a two-way process, and a successful hiring procedure should be one that doesn’t alienate candidates and builds your employer brand. 

Applicant satisfaction is an excellent way to measure how successfully your in-house recruitment team are performing. 

Do you engage with unsuccessful candidates to ask for feedback on your process? You can learn a lot from outside observers to your hiring process, strengthening your recruitment department. 

 

4. Retention Rate 

And finally, look at your retention rates for an accurate picture of your hiring success. 

Recruitment and retention go hand-in-hand, and you can never claim to have an excellent recruitment process if your retention is poor.  

High employee retention rates are the one thing that unites successful companies across all sectors. Re-hiring is always more costly than investing in your current team, so once you have attracted those quality finance candidates, offering excellent career progression opportunities as well as generous employee benefits will keep your retention rates high. 

 

Does Your In-House Recruitment Team Need the Help of an Expert? 

Attracting quality finance candidates through your job adverts and referral procedure is just one part of your in-house recruitment department’s overarching role. 

Anyone who has experience of in-house recruitment will understand the variety of the role, which can often distract from the sole function. Dealing with various candidates, contracts, new starters and those leaving the company – sometimes the in-house recruitment team don’t get time to do much recruiting at all.  

Partnering with an external recruiter specialising in the type of candidate you need is an excellent way to improve your recruitment results, speed up the process, and bring the cost per hire down. 

If you have struggled to attract quality finance candidates, talk to us today about helping locate the elusive finance talent you need. 

Call me on 01282 930930 or contact our team of finance recruitment experts by clicking here. 

 

Thanks, 

Rachel 

 

About Rebus Financial Recruitment   

Rebus Financial Recruitment provides a specialist and focused recruitment service to its customers, which historically range from various organisations, including SME’s to large PLCs.   

We strive to offer both the client and candidate a seamless recruitment experience. Using our expertise, we get to the heart of employer and employee needs, and, in doing so, we match the two perfectly. To find out more, get in contact with one of our team today, or you can call us on 01282 930930.