How should a Hiring process be judged? If you ask many HR teams or Recruiters they will tell you that their performance is often judged on metrics like time to hire or cost to hire.
However, arguably the best way to judge the success of a recruitment process is whether the individual who is hired for the position ultimately performs well in the role and stays at the company. If we imagine that in an ideal world we want to be recruiting talented individuals who perform well over time, what can companies to do to increase the probability that this happens?
Let’s say for example that an employee who was hired in the past year is either underperforming or has left the company. The person with the greatest amount of visibility of this would be the direct manager – the person who was likely the decision-maker on the hire in the first place.
If the HR department is working in a siloed nature, there is a chance that the Talent Acquisition or Recruitment team might never be made aware of the performance level of the individual or the reasons for their departure. This makes it very difficult to improve the recruitment process, increase the chances of hiring someone who is the right fit for the role and therefore boost employee retention.
In the event that those responsible for Talent Acquisition are given insight and feedback on performance levels of new hires, how possible is it for them to act upon this and enhance their hiring process. I would argue that because there are often multiple parties involved in the recruitment process it is extremely difficult to identify where in the chain improvements need to be made.
Most companies use one or more of the following; Recruitment Consultants, Job Boards, Online Professional Networks, Phone Interviewing, Video Interviewing and Psychometric Tests. In the same way that HR may or may not be given visibility on whether the successful candidate ultimately performed well and stayed at the company, it is even less likely that these “Suppliers” are made aware of the eventual result of the hiring process.
Just as HR and Recruitment Teams have their performance judged by Time and Cost, so “Suppliers” are often only incentivised to perform their service in isolation over a relatively short time frame as this infographic discusses in more detail.
One could argue that of all the service providers mentioned above, only recruitment consultants have an incentive to ensure the individual who is hired stays and performs given that they often have to refund all or part of their fee if the candidate leaves the company in a 3-6 month timeframe.
If an employee leaves a company and HR are immediately on the clock being judged by time and cost to hire, then there is little to no chance that they can make a proper assessment of what might be done to improve the hiring process. Instead they are driven to quickly engage in the same, potentially under-performing cycle as usual. This is a vicious circle where improvement is practically impossible.
Companies should start by making sure that anyone involved in the Hiring Process is given visibility on performance and retention. Rather than thinking of third parties in the recruitment chain as suppliers or service providers, it may be better to also regard them as stakeholders in the hiring decision – holding them accountable for eventual performance and retention of a new hire. Without this type of visibility, we are left in a situation where the blind are leading the blind and that will never provide an optimal outcome.