Most recruiters understand that effective talent acquisition isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon of employer brand outreach, patient networking and building an enviable culture of attraction and retention…although some placement turnarounds are done at a full sprint!

Return on Investment is, traditionally, a term most readily applied to budgeting, or the comparison of spending between two or more budgets: have I received good service within the scope of what I would consider to be a fair spend? In recruitment, this manifests pretty simply: have I hired someone within the time constraints and budget of my overall recruitment plan?

Modern recruitment practice, however, is so much more than efficient use of money. 

As any employer who has had to deal with the great resignation, and incredible shifts in hiring expectations, operation and management can tell you, recruitment is still, even in our digitally dominant world, about relationships. 

Good modern recruitment strikes a balance: between efficiency and the natural order of relationship building between recruiter and client/candidate. A positive Return on Recruitment Investment – unique to each company – is the most obvious sign of a correct balance being struck. 

Modern problems, modern solutions.

So where does the candidate experience fit into this culture of effective service provision, and how can you measure it?

Recruiters are operating amidst a mass of cultural and business change. Candidates are in more demand than ever; the pandemic continues to have a huge impact on the success or failure of entire sectors, and what people want from a workplace is shifting away from linear safe pay and benefit packages to careers built on meaning, empathy and positive societal good.

So how do you measure recruitment services ROI? 

You focus on the above drivers of change and consider the following question in this context – what do candidates and clients want from recruiters, aside from the simple offer of a job, or the CV of prospective talent? 

Well, studies show:

• Candidates want a more empathetic, more meaningful sort of recruitment service, focused on career growth and culture fit. 
• Clients need to know the hires they’re getting are quality, long term hires that won’t turn over the second another offer comes in, and that are resilient to counteroffers. 

This indicates recruitment needs to be sustainable, consistent and personal. Recruitment needs to centre the candidate in the process. If these three elements can be harnessed, recruitment will, in the main, be effective. 

Hence the importance of the candidate experience. Everything you need to know about your future recruitment success hinges on how you create a sustainable, consistent and personal candidate experience. 

So how, and what, should recruiters and HR leaders be measuring within their managed recruitment services to make sure they’re actually doing a good job by these new, candidate-focused standards?

Build a modern culture of engagement. 

Modern recruitment culture means from root to branch every stakeholder in the funnel needs to be aware of the shifting sands of candidate expectations, and how modern recruitment services have adapted in the wake of the pandemic. 

This takes some eagle-eyed leadership and targeted changes to your recruitment strategies. Examples of “modern” recruitment practices that have been proven to elevate recruitment standards and connect with candidates more effectively are:

• Introduction of Video Interviewing and Remote Onboarding
• Faster application processing and communication
• ATS and recruitment CRM innovation
• The rise of employer brand marketing
• More agile and meaningful benefits packages

Incorporate targeted tech into your recruitment stack.

The above 5 modern recruitment elements are unified by one thing – tech. 

Incorporating new recruitment tech into your stack needs to be carefully chosen and targeted to meet the needs of your industry

Rectec’s very own ATS and recruitment CRM comparison service Rectec Compare was created for this exact reason – to help companies reach into the highly competitive recruitment tech marketplace and find the exact solution for them, that can utilise tech to help them elevate their recruitment services.

Seek business feedback. Constantly.

Finally, feedback is your skeleton key to unlocking the candidate experience. 

If you don’t have real-time recruitment data sets to analyse, service improvement becomes a guessing game. 

While tech and utilising certain programmes within platforms can open direct lines of communications with candidates to seek feedback on your recruitment management, the key lies in your consultant’s ability to consistently apply feedback into the recruitment funnel, finding out key differentiators to improve overall recruitment outcomes. 

This is how, and why, candidate experience sits central to modern understandings of recruitment ROI.

A quick, responsive process is what you need to attract and engage the best talent.

At Rectec we help organisations to find the best Applicant Tracking System or best Recruitment CRM to suit your needs, accompanied by our unique complementary technology marketplace, to help you build the perfect recruitment tech stack for your business.

You can click here to register for Rectec Compare – and best of all, it’s completely free of charge.

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