5 Metrics For Evaluating Your Talent Attraction Strategy

With 2023 quickly approaching, it’s a great time to sit down and review your talent attraction strategy. Taking the time to see where your applicants and successful candidates are being sourced from is an exercise that can help you better allocate your time and budget next year and stay ahead of the competition. Here are five metrics to consider when deciding where to source your talent from in 2023.

Quantity of Candidates

Take a look at how many applications you received from each source and ask yourself the following questions:

1. Did some come through walk-ins, referrals, job boards, hiring events, or other avenues? 

2. For those that came from job boards or hiring events, which ones did they come from? 

3. Did you receive more applications for certain roles compared to others? 

If you’re not generating enough applicants, consider either tapping into new talent pools or evaluating how to dive deeper into existing pools. You may find that one source may be great for one type of role, whereas another source may be better for a different type of role.

If you’re stretched for capacity and not seeing a good ROI on your time or money from one channel, consider reallocating your time and money to another channel which can better serve your needs. For example, if you’re sitting at a job fair booth for 3 hours and only get 3 hires from it, can you be spending those 3 hours more productively on other avenues. Don’t be afraid to adjust this throughout the year if you see changes in your numbers.

Quality of Candidates

We’ve heard the saying “Quality > Quantity” - does it apply to the job applications you receive too? The average job posting receives 250 applicants. While it’s nice to say you received 100+ applications for a role, there’s a good chance that a large chunk of those applications aren’t qualified. By the time you do a quick 30 second skim of each application and filter out candidates who don’t meet your base requirements, you’ll either not have enough quality candidates to interview, or your shortlist will be too long and require more of your time to further narrow down. 

When comparing different avenues to source candidates from, consider the quality of the candidates you receive across each channel. If you can generate a smaller, higher quality shortlist, it will save you time reviewing applications and allow you to focus your time elsewhere. 

Applicant Response Time

Candidates can look great on paper, but it means nothing if they don’t reply to you after you extend an interview offer. Ghosting has been an issue recently for employers, with The Globe and Mail reporting 40% of candidates ghosting hospitality managers. Review your previous correspondence with applicants who ghosted you - are they coming from a specific talent pool or is it diversified? Focusing on channels that generate highly engaged and responsive applicants might be of more interest to you than generating a high volume of candidates. 

To take this a step further, consider if there’s anything you can be doing to improve applicant response time. If you’re taking a few weeks to reply to candidates, they’re likely finding other positions before you reach out. Consider tightening your turnaround time on applicant outreach to see if that increases response rates from candidates. 

Retention

The quality of your candidates should not just be tracked at the application review stage. Track your candidates through the hiring and onboarding process and check in with hiring managers once the successful candidates start their roles. Keep an eye on any trends that appear with regards to performance and retention and if there are any patterns tied to where the candidates applied from. This will save you from having to refill roles in the future if you find candidates sourced from a specific talent pool are frequently churning from their roles. 

Moving Forward

While no talent attraction strategy is perfect, these considerations can help you reflect on what’s working well and where you can improve in 2023. You can find a sample metric tracking table below to guide you in your reflection. If you’re looking for ways to improve your talent attraction metrics, consider adding FindWRK as an avenue to source talent from.

Sample Recruiting Metric Worksheet