The Value of External Benchmarking

John Vlastelica recently wrote in ERE about the importance of putting external benchmarks for recruiting performance in context. He emphasizes that factors such as type of people hired, number of recruiters, compensation offered, and hiring manager engagement differ enough between companies to make external benchmarking not so helpful.

In defense of external benchmarking, two points:

First, many of the very differences John points out as factors that make external benchmarking less useful are drivers of recruiting performance that are within the control of the recruiting executive to change. Take “number of recruiters”: having enough recruiters to comfortably cover req load generally leads to better quality of hire and time to fill, among other metrics. And, the recruiting executive has authority over how to allocate his/her budget and should have the capability to influence others to increase that budget. When you ask why you don’t compare well to the external benchmark, and you find you have 80% of the recruiter headcount that others have (accounting for hiring type and volume), I wouldn’t label that discrepancy a difference that makes the external benchmark useless, but rather a potential underlying cause of your underperformance.

Second, and this may be unfairly broadening John’s definition of “external benchmarking,” qualitative benchmarking is almost always valuable. Seeing what the best companies do and applying the relevant elements of that practice to your organization is what has propelled the performance of many recruiting executives (and our business model) for years. In fact, I find recruiting executives tend to put too much “false” context around the practices of others (“They’re in a different industry,” “They have more HR support,” etc.), rather than appreciating the core elements of the practice that work across industry, recruiting structure, and most other differences you can name.

Thanks to John for calling us out as a valuable source of information for recruiting executives, and I do agree with his point when it comes to some benchmarks that executives commonly ask about—e.g., structure, cost per hire by industry rather than position type—ones that really do depend too intimately on organizational context. External benchmarking should be put in context, but not too much context as to demotivate accountability for change.

Applications Drop to Three-Year Low

Application volume fell markedly—37%—from December 2010 to December 2011, relieving some of the pressure placed on recruiters by too many (often low quality) applications. While application volume is not yet back to pre-recession levels, moderate improvements in the global hiring picture across 2011 are reflected in recruiters’ applicant pools. And further modest year-over-year improvements in recruiting executives’ hiring forecasts suggest the trend will continue.

But recruiting organizations can't relax just yet—good news aside, the labor market remains highly fragmented and complex, both within and across geographies. Recruiting faces unique labor market realities in each region and must quickly gain local labor market intelligence to recruit effectively. The best recruiting organizations are developing talent acquisition strategies that consider both short- and long-term talent needs in domestic and international markets of interest. They are also leveraging recruiting staff across markets to meet global hiring demand. Stay tuned for our research to be released later this year on realizing recruiting success in a global environment.

Recruiting in 2012: By the Numbers

The 2012 Recruiting Forecast is here (for CLC Recruiting members)!  Based on responses from more than 780 organizations across industries and geographies, this benchmarking report provides projections for 2012 budget, staff, hiring levels, sourcing channel usage, and recruiting productivity. 

A few key numbers from this year’s forecast (links for CLC Recruiting members):

0.5%—The net forecasted change in recruiting budget.
Recruiting budgets will hold steady in 2012, responding cautiously to economic volatility. Access our topic center, Managing In Economic Uncertainty, to learn how the best companies succeeded during periods of uncertainty over the last fifteen years.

#1—The rank of employment websites in the list of budget items most likely to see increased investment.
Most organizations plan to increase or maintain their current budget allocated to the employment website. Use our Action Toolkit, Upgrading Your Employment Website, to follow a step-by-step process to implement best-in-class enhancements to your site.

About 1/3—The proportion of recruiting departments planning to increase recruiter headcount.
The best recruiters and sourcers are Talent Advisors, individuals who use their recruiting expertise to influence talent and business decisions. See the Hiring Talent Advisors section of our website to learn demonstrative methods to hire the best recruiters.

79%—The percentage of recruiting departments planning to increase focus on professional networking sites.
More organizations are moving away from search firms to LinkedIn and other professional networking sites to source their hires. Use our Action Toolkit, Launching a Social Media Recruiting Experiment, to create smart pilots for LinkedIn and other social networking tools.

8 times—How much the expectation for rising application volume has increased since last year.
Recruiting executives forecast even more applications in 2012, a troubling reality when paired with the expectation of rising recruiter workloads. Take our recruiter e-learning, Writing Clear, Compelling Job Postings, to learn how to help potential candidates screen themselves out of the hiring process before they even apply.

Top 10 in 2011

What a year it has been for the CLC Recruiting membership. Let’s take a brief look at the top downloads in 2011 (links for CLC Recruiting members):

1. Sourcing
Smart Sourcing
Our feature research for 2011 helps recruiting teams prioritize sourcing efforts, generate high-value intelligence, apply collective intelligence to sourcing activities, and use sourcing expertise in broader decision-making.

2. Recruiter Capabilities 
Topic Center: Recruiter Performance
This online portal helps you define recruiters' role as Talent Advisors, identify effective ways to develop Talent Advisor capabilities, and involve managers in recruiter development.

3. Benchmarking
rIQ Benchmarking Center (recently updated!)
Our online interactive resource allows recruiting staff members to benchmark metrics across a variety of segments including organizational structures, recruiting budgets, sourcing, and key process metrics. The benchmarks have recently been updated and new metrics have been introduced.

4. Social Media Recruiting
Action Toolkit: Launching a Social Media Experiment
Use this toolkit to brainstorm, select, and launch a social media recruiting pilot project using principles of outcome-focused experimentation.

5. Networking
Recruiter Discussion Forum
This forum helps you connect with and learn from thousands of corporate recruiting professionals. You can ask questions and share solutions related to various recruiting topics.

6. Diversity Recruiting
Diversity Labor Market Briefing
This briefing is a global, segment-by-segment analysis of labor market dynamics, channel usage, and offer enticements for key diversity segments in Europe, North America, and South Africa.

7. Recruiting Structures
Structuring Recruiting for Impact
This trends report helps you understand how to structure your recruiting team and determine the degree of specialization.

8. Recruiting Metrics
Recruiting Metrics Library
This library contains essential recruiting metrics to build solid reporting, analysis, and decision-making competencies and improve recruiting function performance.

9. Line Partnership
Business Leaders' Introduction to Recruiting
This customizable presentation introduces the Recruiting function and current realities to business leaders and generates their commitment to recruiting.

10. Recruiter Capabilities
E-Learning: Achieving Great Hiring Manager Partnerships
This e-learning module teaches recruiters how to foster partnership with hiring managers.

Recruiting Broadcast

• Unemployment rate in the UK increased to 8.3% from 7.9% last quarter, with public sector job losses accounting for the most of the rise in unemployment.  (People Management, UK)
• A healthy outlook for Indian labor market in 2012! About 43% of employers in India expect hiring to increase in the Q1 of 2012. However, the IT sector plans to hire less and offer reduced salary hikes next year. (The Economic Times)
• A recent report shows that only three out of four new university graduates in Australia, willing to work found a job after finishing their degree.  (Herald Sun)
• About 21 million American employees plan to change jobs in 2012 and only 20% of surveyed employees reported to have established career goals with their current employer.  (Market Watch)
• Graduates in Canada are expected to encounter a stagnant labor market next year as a number of industries report sluggish growth. (The Gazette)

Recruiting Broadcast

• Most organizations in the U.S. struggle to find skilled workers and plan to train new hires for critical skills. (The Wall Street Journal featuring Donna Weiss, Managing Director, CLC Recruiting)
• Interns willing to pay for work experience in UK. Demand for work experience is increasing rapidly among young graduates in UK.  Graduates perceive internships as training and typically pay an average of £60 per day to organizations for it. (Recruiter, UK)
• Are your social media usage policies flexible? A recent survey shows that 48% of people age 16-24 refuse to work for an organization where social networking websites are banned. (People Management, UK)
• A recent forecast shows that the public sector in UK will lose more than 700,000 jobs in the next five years. (Source needed)
• German unemployment dropped more than economists forecasted, as organizations in Germany continue to add workers despite the financial and political turbulence in Europe. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• Is Singapore’s labor market insulated from global economic turbulence? Employment rate and median monthly income in Singapore increased by 78% and 8.3% respectively. (Today, Singapore)
• The Netherlands expects a shortfall of about 60,000 technically skilled young workers by 2014 as the number of students opting for vocational engineering and technology courses dropped by 30% over seven years. (Radio Netherlands Worldwide)

Recruiting Broadcast

• Struggling to find talent? Two-in-five U.S. organizations continuously market even those positions that are not open at present but will be in near future.  About 72% of these organizations report that this strategy enables them to reduce time to fill and cost per hire. (PR Newswire)
• Are younger workers worried more about salary or your social media policies? A latest report shows that about two-thirds of students plan to ask about social media usage policies during their interview and one in four consider this a crucial decision factor in accepting an offer. (Market Watch)
• IT organizations in India experience declining attrition rates as employees grow skeptical about switching jobs. (The Economic Times)
• A report shows that UK hires the most online freelance workers in Europe, followed by Germany and Switzerland. (The Recruiter, UK)
• Graduate unemployment in the UK declined for the first time since the economic meltdown, but graduate salaries remain flat. (People Management)