by Ben Hess, Managing Director, ThirdPool Recruiting
The most reliable recruiting lead measure is the face-to-face appointment/interview with a viable prospect.
But what if this lead measure is not producing the lag measure of new hires?
One option is to disregard (or replace) the face-to-face appointment as the lead measure with some other metric.
Before exercising this option, ask yourself these questions:
Do I have realistic expectations?  Not every recruiting appointment is going to turn into a hire. If you’re selective and you have good competitors, a reasonable appointment-to-hire conversion rate is about 25%.
Are my recruiting prospects viable?  Most recruiting problems start as sourcing problems.If you’re not impressed with the people you’re meeting (as human beings), make some changes to how your sourcing is done.
Am I a competent interviewer? Â At ThirdPool, we get to see much of the recruiting process from a data perspective. Â There is a wide variance of success rates among hiring managers, and much of that variance can be tracked directly to what happens during the interview. If your interviews are not converting at a reasonable rate, take a look at how you’re interviewing.
The most successful hiring managers stay focused on the face-to-face appointment as the lead measure, but make sure their appointments are high quality interactions.
