It used to be really easy to measure a recruiter’s performance. All you had to do was total up the number of calls made, the number of client visits attended, the number of new jobs brought on and most importantly the amount of placements they made.
Currently a number of industry verticals are seeing the benefits of being able to measure and evaluate performance in many new and exciting ways from the move online however for recruitment agencies measuring sales activity is proving to be a bit more difficult.
New recruiters entering the market are now much more likely to be communicating through mobile, social networks and email which could be just as successful as picking up the phone and making calls to hiring managers.
Once again, it comes back to the debate of the traditional vs. new age methods. If a traditional recruiter who has already made 50 canvas calls is sitting next to a new school recruiter who hasn’t made any calls, who is the most successful?
The new school recruiter in the same time could have connected with 20 new hiring managers, checked their list on Twitter for any new potential vacancy chatter and connected with three new target companies looking for help with their recruitment or growth challenges. All of which is hidden and silent to the recruitment manager.
Of course this issue isn’t so much of a concern when both types of recruiters are making placements. However if they begin to struggle and their figures take a dip what recruitment KPI’s can you use to measure performance if you can’t hear and help them with their sales calls?
A recruitment manager or owner has no idea about how the recruiter is communicating and using their social network channels. Before when you could listen to them on the phone it was easier to step in and offer advice however it isn’t quite so easy with the new recruiters entering the market. They are going to be much more at ease with communicating online and using social networks to publish vacancies and the most up to date information which whilst making it easier for them to qualify who to target, makes it very difficult for managers to analyse performance.
The best methods of social recruitment from a sales perspective still remain a fuzzy area and are tricky to monitor. And just for the record, no we wouldn’t advise asking for your employees social network logins (although some companies have already done just that).