The interview process, response time, duration of training: sometimes it is hard to evaluate if your hiring process is profitable. To find out how effective it really is, ask yourself these five questions.
- How much time have I devoted to choosing high-potential candidates?
Even if it takes time for the message to be diffused once you've displayed the position, you must avoid drawing out the hiring process. This is a sign of a poor hiring strategy deployment, such as a poor display, for example.
You must not lose sight of the level of difficulty of the position to be filled. If the employee need to have very specific skills or if it is an executive-level position, you can normally expect to spend more time and money searching for the rare gem. However, if a position doesn't require too much expertise, it shouldn't take months to be filled.
- Where Did My Candidates Hear of the Position?
One way to measure the effectiveness of your diffusion strategies is to oblige candidates to reveal where they heard about the position in their application. Job sites often are expensive and generate a lot of applications, but the latter aren't necessarily the most interesting. Word of mouth is often a very good way to diffuse your message, though you need to know that.
- What Is the Cost-Per-Hire?
This is an essential element in measuring the hiring process. All expenses must be included in this equation such as costs for: the recruiter's and manager's salaries, the job site postings background checks, new-employee training, job fair, etc.
If you find the total cost mind-boggling, know that the cost of a bad hire for a company can reach an amount of $50,000, according to a 2012 survey conducted for CareerBuilder.
- What is My Employee's Longevity Within My Organization?
Knowing now, how much the hiring process costs, the main goal of every organization should be to reduce employee turn-over rates. When employees are resigning one after another, this usually is a sign of poor management. Employees are unhappy there, so they resign.
On the contrary, low turn-over rates means employees have carved a place for themselves and feel engaged in the company's success. And, as it takes new employees several months, or even a year to achieve optimal productivity levels, starting the whole process over from scratch, slows down achievement of the company's objectives. Long-term plans are placed on the backburner while human resources desperately try to fill the vacant position in a panic.
- Is It a Good Match?
An effective hiring process must also consider quality of hire. Hiring is like grafting then employee into a team and organization. A few months after an employee is hired, you should ask colleagues and superiors how well this employee is integrating in the organizational culture. Employees who are in their element stay longer, since they share the same vision and objectives.
*Survey by Harris Interactive conducted for Career Builder in the United States, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom, among 400 to 2,611 resource management hiring managers and professionals in each country, from November 1 to November 30, 2012.