Ask the Hiring Boss is our ongoing advice series dedicated to all questions HR. Each month, our team of hiring and staffing experts team up to answer the questions we all have but don’t know who to ask. Welcome!
Don’t forget to subscribe to submit your questions — you can do that on our main Ask the Hiring Boss page.
Dear Hiring Boss,
I’m in charge of a four-person team of recruiters and have been tasked with reporting to our executives on how our hiring decisions affect the bottom line or revenue. Are there any recruiting metrics you recommend teams track? Any other advice?
– Aspiring Data Nerd
Dear ADN,
Absolutely! Before we start: Kudos to your team for treating recruiting as a fundamental part of the company and its revenue. Having buy-in on this is huge. And yes! There are some easy metrics you can use to report on your recruiting efforts to your boss and team.
One area where you can make a major impact is in the time it takes to identify a candidate and fill an open position or job vacancy, sometimes called “time-to-fill.” Tracking time-to-fill is essential because it directly impacts your ability to onboard an employee, but also when you limit the number of days a role is open, you improve productivity by getting the seat filled faster. Managers are more productive because they don’t need to spend as much time interviewing candidates. Openings fill more quickly, which does a couple of things: the cost of open positions goes down, and businesses can continue working at full capacity.
We consider time to fill one of the 12 vital KPIs for hiring managers, so when in doubt, start here. I’d suggest setting up a spreadsheet for yourself to track time-to-fill ongoing but reporting to executives using a PowerPoint or Google Slides. Start with a slide on what “time-to-fill” means for those not in the know!
Best of luck!
We’ll be back soon with our next installment. Don’t forget to submit your own question, or read our other previous answers in our Ask the Hiring Boss series!