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The Best of The BestUsing Recruiter Data to Define Candidate Experience

Everyone is talking about AI in recruiting.

Scout’s ratings of recruiters is a game-

changing and unique application of AI; it

provides unbiased data to measure and

improve the candidate experience and

hiring outcomes.”

Madeline Laurano, Founder, Aptitude Research

goscoutgo.com

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Contents

4The Candidate Experience Context

6Understanding Recruiter Data

8The Findings

10The Intersection of Excellence

11Key Recommendations

13Looking Ahead

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When asked how they track the candidate experience, employers typically mention surveys or net promoter scores. While these are useful measures, they fail to monitor the entirety of the experience for all candidates. Why? Because many of the most in-demand candidates – those recruited by third-party search firms – are never tracked at all.

The ability to measure candidate experience and recruiting process effectiveness across third-party resources should rank high among employers’ priorities. Going beyond the obvious desire to justify costs, there is a critical need to understand how well external processes are working and the caliber of candidates being delivered. This is arguably even more important than measures of internal processes because the roles most frequently allocated to third parties are those that are harder to fill and most associated with revenue production.

A potential solution lies in the ability to objectively calculate the performance of both search firms and employers engaged in third-party recruiting efforts. As an AI-driven recruitment marketplace that generates employer-to-search firm matches, Scout is able to analyze historical data from thousands of successful matches to generate objective performance ratings and shows the factors that contribute to a quality process and higher quality candidates. To our knowledge, no similar measurement tools exist on the market today.

Candidate experience is something most employers agree is important, but the resources available to measure it are limited.

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Today’s labor market is unprecedented. With the U.S. unemployment rate well below four percent and the shortage of talent emerging as leaders’ top concern in study after study, candidate experience is more important than ever. Based on the attention and current investment levels, it appears many talent acquisition professionals agree: Improving the candidate experience is cited as being their top priority and the vast majority expect to increase or at least maintain their candidate experience spending levels.

We also know that skills needs are evolving rapidly. To keep up with the pace of change, a warm body with the right credentials on paper is not enough. Today’s employers need the best of the best. In other words, an employer needs the ability to

The Candidate Experience Context

access a slate of highly qualified candidates for job openings. With unprecedented levels of demand for critical skills, employers who are able to choose from multiple top-tier candidates for a particular job opening gain a competitive advantage. In that case, selection is among “the best of the best.”

The impact of a bad experience is significant and difficult for hiring organizations to overcome. Candidates will share the details with friends and on social media. It negatively affects their perceptions as consumers and reduces their intent to purchase. And many will drop out of a process that fails to meet their expectations.

Employers who fail to meet expectations may well find themselves in second place and not

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just for the reasons cited in candidate surveys. One outcome of a negative candidate experience seems to have gone overlooked: Third-party recruiters may not even put their best candidates forward in the first place. In this labor market, top talent is in high demand. If recruiters know an organization has a poor or inefficient hiring process, why would they submit their very best? The result leaves employers to select from among the “best of the desperate.”

Fortunately, existing survey data provides a clear picture of what candidates expect. For example, we know they want a responsive process, which is why eighty-one percent say they want status updates. Candidates also respond well to timeliness and companies that do not deliver

are missing out on the best talent. One survey found that one-third of candidates had dropped out because the process took too long. Lastly, candidates want details – job descriptions, benefits and salary are the top three types of information candidates want.

If recruiters know an organization has a poor or inefficient hiring process, why would they submit their very best?

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Understanding Recruiter Data

Most employers today face challenges that extend well beyond a competitive labor market. The widening skills gap and limited pipelines of in-demand talent (STEM, sales, skilled labor and healthcare roles are a few examples) put pressure on talent acquisition teams who are already likely to be resource constrained. These are challenges Scout clients face every day.

At Scout, we sought to understand how recruiter data – relating to companies’ in-house recruiters as well as third-party search firm recruiters – could provide insights to help employers better navigate a difficult hiring environment. We set out to answer a fundamental question: What does our data tell us about recruiters that can help employers attract and retain the “best of the best”?

In an effort to answer this, we looked at the recruiter data associated with 140,000 submissions in the Scout Marketplace. As we analyzed, an important story began to emerge. We found that objective, AI-driven recruiter ratings predicted candidate quantity and quality, and identified the employer actions contributing to an efficient recruiting effort and, therefore, a better candidate experience.

For employers, this news is promising. Recruiter ratings provide a clear picture of the specific actions and behaviors organizations can prioritize to realize double-digit increases in quality of hire. In the near-term, this can help talent acquisition teams identify internal process improvements, deliver cost savings and optimize search firm engagement by selecting from and attracting the highest performing firms.

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The findings presented here are drawn from an analysis of Scout recruiter ratings. Specifically, we looked at the extent to which hiring company and search firm ratings could be used to predict outcomes. Given this, it is useful to understand how the Scout algorithm generates ratings.

Understanding what candidates want is useful, but employers need to understand how to measure their ability to deliver it. Recruiter data – and more specifically, recruiter ratings – provide the opportunity to understand these dynamics and respond accordingly.

For clarity, the term “ratings” is not used to suggest the subjective type of Yelp or Amazon-style reviews many of us are accustomed to as consumers. This discussion centers on historical performance in the context of data-driven ratings. The Scout algorithm provides an objective, unbiased view of how well hiring company and search firm recruiters perform within a given market, industry and role.

Our hiring company internal recruiter ratings measure timeliness of response and how complete job postings are (e.g., do posts include location, job description, visa information, etc.). In other words, employers are measured on responsiveness, timeliness and information – the exact attributes candidates say are important to them.

Search firm recruiter ratings are generated through an evaluation of a third-party recruiter’s likelihood of success based on past successes related to job role, skills match, location, job level, etc. This is built on a proprietary, AI-driven model designed to continually learn over time. Search firm recruiter ratings are a measure of individual recruiters’ results. In general, we have found that it takes approximately eight submissions for top-rated search firm recruiters to set themselves apart with a previously unknown employer.

An Introduction to Recruiter Ratings

Search firm recruiter ratings are based on recent past performance. Employer ratings are based on past behavior. For search firms, they indicate the quality of the process. For employers, they can be looked at for guidance on the highest impact areas to emphasize to ensure they are attracting and hiring the “best of the best.”

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The Findings

In general, more highly rated recruiters deliver more quality hires faster than recruiters with lower ratings. Part of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Highly rated recruiters choose to work with highly rated companies and vice versa. Importantly, the process is not made more effective by the ratings themselves, but rather the actions that define the rating. Thus, both hiring company recruiters and search firm recruiters are well served by prioritizing the behaviors that contribute to a higher rating.

Recruiter Ratings Predict Quantity and Quality

Not only do higher quality recruiters deliver more candidates, but the candidates they deliver are of better quality. When talent is in short supply, this can make the difference between having well- qualified candidates to choose from versus those who are merely capable of doing the job.

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Increasing Candidate Quantity

Analyzing the data on submissions per recruiter demonstrated that higher quality search firm recruiters tend to deliver more candidates. For example, a five-star search firm recruiter will deliver approximately ten percent more candidates than average. And, the highest rated recruiters will submit about 118 percent more candidates than the lowest rated recruiters.

This should not be taken to mean that ratings of search firm recruiters are the only thing that matters. Employer ratings have a significant impact as well. For example, A five-star hiring company recruiter receives about twenty-seven percent more submissions than the average. In addition, search firm recruiters with higher ratings tend to focus their submissions on five-star hiring companies.

Increasing Candidate Quality

In our analysis of acceptance rates, we found that five-star search firm recruiters are twenty-five percent more effective at identifying qualified candidates than the average. They also have forty percent more acceptances than average. This translates to hires as well. A five-star search-firm recruiter closes approximately fifty-four percent more hires per hiring company they work with than the average recruiter.

When it comes to attracting quality candidates, the behaviors of hiring company recruiters are important too. Five-star employer recruiters can expect a thirteen percent higher acceptance rate, forty-four percent more acceptances and thirty-six percent more hires than average.

Increasing Efficiency In addition to seeing more candidates of higher quality, highly rated employer recruiters are more efficient in their search firm engagements. On average, highly rated hiring company recruiters work with twenty-six percent fewer search firm recruiters per position. In fact, these employers frequently worked with less than one recruiter per position (meaning that employers work with the same high-value recruiter for multiple positions) – an average outcome achieved by only the five-star employer recruiters. Practically speaking, this means highly rated employer recruiters can work with fewer, but more targeted, search firm recruiters to achieve their goals.

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The data paints a clear picture of the positive outcomes that can be expected from a highly rated search firm recruiter or a highly rated employer. Given their significance, these alone are worthy of careful consideration. The most meaningful impact, however, comes when highly rated recruiters and highly rated employers work together.

We know, for example, a five-star employer recruiter working with a five-star search firm recruiter results

The Intersection of ExcellenceThe Impact of Top Employers and Top Recruiters

in forty-five percent more submissions and an acceptance rate forty percent higher than average. Of course, the most important outcome is hires and that’s where this intersection of excellence truly reveals itself. We found that five-star partnerships resulted in hires per recruiter that were 127 percent higher. In addition, hires per position – meaning the number of hires a partnership could be expected to generate per position – were 141 percent higher than average.

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Key Recommendations

Most companies we encounter already have methods in place to measure the effectiveness of in-house teams. Frequently, however, these methods fail to investigate the role of candidate experience in the process. Moreover, we have yet to come across an organization that measures external recruiters in this way.

Creating a positive candidate experience to attract top talent is imperative. For employers, this means it will be necessary to determine objective data points and methodologies to rate internal and external recruiters. Keep in mind that the best recruiters won’t separate themselves from average ones overnight. Just as Scout search-firm recruiters take eight submissions to rise to the top, an appropriate sample size will be required of any company.

Once systems are in place, set up a regular process to analyze the data to see where tweaks need to made in the process. Scout’s algorithm is designed to continually learn from itself and improve matches over time. This is the ideal for any measurement and evaluation initiative.

Ultimately, these efforts should serve to help talent acquisition leaders to quantify the competitive advantages of measuring to specific goals (increasing productivity, maintaining revenue per employee, etc.) to upsell the program internally and make a case for continued investment.

These findings can help employers and search firm recruiters understand what it means to separate from the pack, how to do it and what kinds of results can be expected. Based on the data, here are the top three actions companies can take to attract the best of the best.

Find ways to measure talent acquisition effectiveness – both internally and externally

01

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In our view, the most significant finding from Scout’s data analysis is the substantial impact of top performers working together. This should serve as a call to action for employers to identify top performers and prioritize their development and engagement. Whether it’s through Scout or through homegrown analytics, employers need the right data in hand to see opportunities to change behaviors and players who underperform on critical components of the candidate experience.

While it may be tempting to infer that working with a five-star search firm would be a measurable advantage in and of itself, it’s not that simple. Five-star recruiters choose to work with highly rated companies. These employers of choice are more responsive and provide better information than employers with average ratings. So how do you ensure your organization consistently exhibits the behaviors that lead to double-digit quality-of-hire gains? It takes a standardized system to rate performance over time, strong leadership commitment and incentives tied to the behaviors correlated with excellence.

Enable and optimize top performers

02

Understand where to focus talent acquisition resources

03

One of the most important things to me is

maintaining my 5 star rating. I absolutely look at

employer recruiting ratings; if someone lets lots

of candidates expire I won’t work with them.

— April Estes, Senior Recruiting Director, ProEnlist

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Looking Ahead

For large organizations, working with search firms is a strategic necessity. Receiving objective data on the efficiency of the process is not and companies often lack a complete picture of their candidate experience as a result. Unfortunately for some, this translates into missed opportunities when the most sought-after talent chooses to go elsewhere.

On the other hand, companies that put systems in place to track and measure internal and external recruiters can achieve competitive advantage. They will understand which processes are working and where course corrections are needed. They will be able to identify and connect the contributors best positioned to attain an intersection of excellence. With the right behaviors in place, they will be seen as strategic partners in delivering on core business objectives.

The competitive advantage these companies achieve won’t be generated because these companies are better at measuring things. It will be because they put themselves in a position to choose from the best of the best.

© 2019 Scout Exchange | 844.937.2688 | goscoutgo.com

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About Scout ExchangeA platform for marketplace recruiting, Scout is a new, data-driven way to connect employers and search firms to fill jobs with great talent. Combining the power of marketplace dynamics and machine learning, Scout creates successful employer-to-search firm recruiter matches that deliver better results, improved efficiency and lower cost. Seamlessly integrated with Applicant Tracking Systems, Scout is trusted by hundreds of employers, including 50 Fortune 500 companies, and thousands of specialty recruiters. For more information, please visit www.goscoutgo.com.