If you are an HR type who is just forwarding resumes in bulk to your hiring manager, this post probably isn’t for you.
How do you determine cost effectiveness of your sourcing channels? Do you take the simple approach or
really mine down for the gritty details? Or are you the recruiting version of Doug Henning? (It’s magic!)
Back in my corporate sourcing days, I always looked at how much the contract would cost with a particular source and then ran a report from my companies ATS to see how many hires I had. I felt a particular burden to make our job boards pay for themselves.
But - while that’s certainly a valid way of looking at cost effectiveness of source per hire – I think HR needs to dig deeper and look at how many candidates made it to the screening process, how many made it to the interview process, how many got an offer, etc., to really evaluate if a particular source or sourcer is producing.
I’ve always been happy to trumpet I paid x dollars for this contract and we had 25 hires. But there were times when I would be using a particular niche site that produced stellar, hard-to-find candidates, but we would have “weirdness” as we neared the home stretch of making an offer – candidates got an offer from another company, weren’t interested in the job or whatever – so in theory – while the site did produce – it wouldn’t show a true effectiveness in decreasing my cost per hire.
And what about free sites? You’re not paying a thing to use them – unless you count the hourly rate of your recruiter or sourcer surfing them. If you are already with a major board – do you source there first, and free sites second?
I don’t think so – not anymore, I wouldn’t. There is too much free information abounding on the internet to not take the time to set up some strings on Google – save them and check’em daily for updated candidate info. Because you can be sure – if I got a hire from a free source – by FlipSearching, X-raying or whatever other methodology I employed – there was a gleeful, happy dance around the office cubicle. Or in my more recent days – the basement home office!
The hire from a not so obvious source – difficulty and value not reflected in the Cost Per Hire stats….
Neat post Kelly. As a frequent goodwill shopper (by choice not necessity most of the time) I appreciate the value of something free. Your post is very on the money as lately the boards are starting to get slightly villified, even by long time advocates, as being outdated and the place to find some of the lamest candidates. To be honest, I don’t think we’re there yet. But recruiters who know how to do a little something something on the side will rise to the top as the change starts to occur. I’d love to hear more about flipsearching.