Recruitment Audit Tips: 3 Suggestions for Success

By Linda Brenner | June 12, 2024

You've read enough articles - and as a business leader, you've personally experienced - the dramatic changes to the talent marketplace across nearly every industry. On the extremes, some industries have shedded tens of thousands of jobs while others seem to be continually hiring. Everyone in the middle is experiencing disruption due to skills shortages, creeping attrition, new hire no-shows, return to office demands, and the ever-present financial pressures that often end with workforce reductions. In all cases however, companies must streamline and improve their ability to hire and retain high performing employees.

Based on our two decades of experience completing Talent Acquisition audits across dozens of industries, we recommend these three rules of thumb when auditing your own recruiting function:

1. Start with (but don’t over-index on) qualitative research.

In the context of a recruitment audit, the goal of qualitative research is to identify trends in thoughts and opinions about how talent acquisition is working across the organization (or a targeted area of the business.) The intent, therefore, is not to talk with or survey every person who interacts with talent acquisition (which, let’s face it, could be almost everyone in the organization) – but rather to gain insights from individuals who represent key stakeholder groups. With that in mind:

Develop a structured protocol for your interviews and focus groups to ensure consistency, brevity and effectiveness. Asking a structured set of common questions across the stakeholder groups will allow you to identify relevant themes.
Focus on gaining insights into what’s working well about talent acquisition and what needs to improve.
Interview or survey a cross section of stakeholders representing senior leadership, hiring managers, HR partners, internal and external candidates, and the recruiting team itself.
Record discussions (or capture via survey data) in order to analyze, identify and report on themes related to talent acquisition across business units, stakeholders, geographies, etc.
Try to keep an objective demeanor during interviews and discussions about recruiting strengths and opportunities, even if the feedback is harsh.

2. Include analysis of quantitative data.

Many believe that TA data is hard to access or is inaccurate. And they're often right. Factors impedes hiring data accuracy include TA technologies often aren’t integrated, applicant tracking systems aren’t used properly or consistently, varying data sets and definitions of recruiting metrics, to name a few. Despite these challenges though, there are ways to get directionally accurate data. From our TA Auditing experience, here are some recommendations:

Start with hiring data straight out of payroll, where the data is almost always accurate. Analyze two years of data associated with hiring, terminations and internal moves. Identify hiring trends, activities, clusters, etc. across geographies, business units, senior leadership teams, levels - and especially related to critical roles. At a minimum, report on how many were hired each year, broken down by internal vs. external, by level and type. What's most interesting and important about this data? Frame the headlines related to these insights.
Stay away from stating – or becoming distracted by – general averages across the organization (for example: “Our overall turnover is only 8%. We’re doing great!”) Dig into the views that are most important to the business – uncovered in the qualitative work - such as key geographies or business units, critical functional areas such as IT or sales, or other classifications of employees – in order to identify meaningful and actionable talent trends.
Consider what implications this past history has on current and future hiring. What else will impact TA in the next 12-24 months? Acquisitions, divestitures, continued (or changing) attrition trends, and predicted retirements are a good start.
In our experience, the number of reqs opened – and reqs closed – over a period of time (say, two years) can provide important insights into time to fill, percentage of cancelled reqs, req load by recruiter, etc. In our experience conducting 100s of Talent Acquisition Audits, this data within the applicant tracking system (if nothing else) is directionally accurate. In addition, these bookend data points (req open and closed dates) can provide a directionally accurate 'time to fill' metric.
Follow the standard method for calculating cost per hire, even if you need to make some assumptions in the process. This will provide a baseline that can be evaluated against industry benchmarks, prior year costs, etc. It’s not going to be perfect – perfection is likely unattainable here and unlikely to be worth the time and energy – but it will be directionally correct and can be drilled down further if merited by the initial look.
For extra points, partner with someone in Finance and determine the cost of downstream hiring gaps on the business. What does it truly mean when hiring isn't fast enough or good enough? We find downstream costs associated with temp and contractor usage, increased overtime, agency spend, high sign-on bonuses or referrals, early attrition (no shows on day one through first 90 days), etc. Even suggesting a small percentage (say, 5%) of these overall costs saved over time (and after hiring improvements have been made) can vividly illustrate the value of dramatically improved Talent Acquisition.

3. Determine where the greatest process and tech pain points are.

Data points will identify the priorities for auditing your recruiting processes and techologies. When completed a 'self-audit', consider the following steps:

Review job ads: are they interesting, compelling, accurate? Do they differentiate your organization from the competition for talent?
Apply to 1-2 jobs to assess the online application process. Take screen shots and determine: how easy / hard is it? How intuitive and engaging? What might drive candidate drop out due to length, difficulty, unclear messaging or technologies that don't integrate?
What is the "planning" (or "intake") process like when reqs are opened? How thorough is the process of gathering requirements, discussing the need with the hiring manager and setting expectations?
Review sources of candidates / hires. Are they varied, robust, differentiated and competitive? Or are they primarily reliant on job ads (of all types)?
Does TA conduct screening interviews? If so, how consistent, thorough and rapid is the process? How do recruiters capture notes and make recommendations to hiring managers? If not, why?
How consistent and professional is the interviewing process? What tools are used, how are notes captured, how and when do candidates receive information about decisions or next steps?
How are candidate interviews debriefed? Is it passive (e.g., by email) or active (e.g., a live discussion)?
Review the way in which offers are created, approved and shared with the candidates: how much time does this take, what are the pain points or problems that occur? how many different people are involved?
Last, consider the time and effectiveness of the period of time between the offer being accepted and the candidate starting day one?

Even the best-intended Talent Acquisition leaders are likely to find themselves in a situation in which motives are questioned at the conclusion of a do-it-yourself recruitment audit. It can be painful to hear negative feedback but, that's typically why an audit needs to be done in the first place. As long as the effort is structured, genuine, balanced and objective, it's worth doing. If the capacity and capability doesn't exist within your org to undertake a DIY recruiting audit effort, hire outside experts like us. Results and recommendations of an audit often indicate next steps such as considering a new TA strategy, redesigning the recruiting process, configuring technology differently, agreeing on new and prioritized metrics and measures, and determing when the org can expect to see a return on investment related to their TA changes. In any even, be prepared to proactive address legitimate concerns – Is he trying to build an even bigger TA team? Didn’t we just buy new technology a few years ago? Why does she think another recruitment marketing campaign will change anything? What about using AI to make hiring decisions? These can be difficult to address. Whether you hire an outside team of objective experts who specialize in audits and recruitment process improvement – or simply engage a cross-functional team of insiders to complete a structured audit program, bringing others in to lead the recruitment audit will increase the likelihood that the organization will fairly consider and adopt the recommended changes.

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Learn more about Talent Growth Advisors' Recruitment Audit and how you can self-fund talent acquisition improvements. Or contact us to speak directly to one of our senior consultants about Talent Acquistion audits.