How Corporate Recruiters’ Performance is Measured – and Why the Metrics Matter to Job Seekers

Come performance appraisal time, you get evaluated on your productivity. How many widgets did you process? Did you meet your goals?

Corporate recruiters are no different. They have goals, too. And if you know the standards they are held to, you may be able to better position yourself as a successful candidate. Here are some sample metrics toward which recruiters must work:

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Metric: Cycle time, as measured by the number of days it takes to fill a job.

What it means, and Why it matters:  While a company will usually wait to identify the best fit for a job, the faster a job is filled, the better. The longer a position stays open, the more pain it causes for a hiring manager and his or her team who are covering the work. As a candidate, if you can help bring the process to a prompt closure by not only demonstrating that you have the right skills but can also provide prompt closure (prompt start date, ready references, etc.), you may be able to tilt the process in your favor.

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Metric: Cost per hire, as measured by the actual dollars spent to fill a job.

What it means, and Why it matters: Recruiters may have several resources to fill jobs at their disposal, including job boards, job advertising, dollars to relocate a candidate, and the use of staffing firms. All of these cost money. A cost-effective hire is defined as one who brings the most value for the least cost. So, if you’re a candidate who lives near the office, and your recruiter didn’t need to advertise to get your resume, and you meet the criteria of the position, you may be able to position yourself as a cost-effective hire for the company.

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Metric: Quality of hire, or how good a fit the person is for the job in terms of performance.

What it means, and Why it matters: This metric is a bit more difficult to gauge, because the results often lag behind the hire. It could be measured by ratings on the next performance cycle, or through a post-hire manager survey, or through the percentage of terminated employees hired during a period of time. Either way, these results show up long after the hire has been made. As a candidate, you can put a recruiter at ease by demonstrating a strong history of past performance – strong references and performance appraisals are a great place to start.

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Metric: Offer accept rate, or what percentage of job offers are accepted by candidates.

What it means, and Why it matters: A job offer declined by a job candidate is a wasted offer in many ways – the copious amounts of time spent interviewing, the potential mismatch in terms of salary and other expectations between the company and the candidate, and the opportunity cost of having spent time on a single candidate rather than on having hedged bets with other candidates. The more you and the company can agree on terms up front, the less time either of you will waste on a doomed interview process.

By no means are recruiters evaluated on just these metrics. There are countless other ways companies may opt to measure their recruiting function. But the more you know, the more you can streamline your own interview process.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

6 Things You Can Do To Strengthen Your Resume Today

It's a bird! It's a plane!

This article also appeared on Recruiter.com - https://www.recruiter.com/i/6-things-you-can-do-to-strengthen-your-resume-today/

Building an effective resume can be challenging. There are no hard and fast rules associated with writing a resume, which can make the process something of a guessing game – you're trying to figure out, "What will get my resume noticed by a hiring manager or recruiter?"

Let me start out by saying that everybody has a different opinion on what makes an effective resume; if you'd like to learn more about what corporate recruiters have to say what they like and dislike about resumes, you can find the results of an information survey I took here. Sometimes one person's constructive feedback may conflict with another person's, so be warned. This is what happens when there are no absolute guidelines on writing a resume.

As a former recruiter and a current resume writer, I have my own notions about what might make your resume stand out. But, some of my suggestions may conflict with the feedback of others. I'm just letting you know what I've seen work.

So... without further ado... here are 6 things you can do today to strengthen your resume.

1. Spellcheck and proofread. Typos and grammatical errors will likely kill your chances. If you're using a word processing application, there's no reason NOT to use the built in Spelling and Grammar check feature. But keep in mind, this won't necessarily catch misused words that are spelled correctly (i.e., the correct form of whose vs. who's, or accidentally using the word manger instead of manager). Likewise, your word processing application may flag proper nouns or corporate terms. Manually proofreading the document after letting Word do its stuff will enable you to catch these errors.

2. Consider adding a headline. A recruiter will spend about 15 seconds reviewing a resume to see if it's a match. If you have a clear headline just below your name and address that clearly spells out the solution to their job vacancy, such as "ACCOUNTING MANAGER" for an advertised Accounting Manager role, it may encourage the recruiter to keep reading.

3. Eliminate content that is distracting, irrelevant, or not supportive. What I mean by this is if you've been a help desk specialist for the past 10 years, and you're applying for a help desk job, consider leaving off your jobs from before that time when you were a professional landscaper. This can also apply to listed hobbies that don't support your work. Recruiters and hiring managers want to know what you can do in the job. Including that unrelated work experience may be interesting to you or the reader, but it can also invite questions. For example, What line of work are you really looking for? And, Will you be looking to leave the office at 4:30pm to go surfing (that listed hobby). I've also seen resumes where a job seeker started in a job as an administrative assistant (listed on the resume) and has grown into a senior management role, but the hiring manager wondered if the candidate is truly cut from managerial cloth. It's an unfair bias, but it happens.

4. Pay attention to formatting. Do your columns line up? Are your tabs working properly? Is the resume attractive, with enough pleasing white space (areas without text). Microsoft Word can be a bear. If you don't know how to maneuver the program well, hire somebody who can help you format your resume effectively. A misaligned column, for example, can be interpreted by the reader as careless or sloppy work.

5. Add some accomplishments. Listing what you do on a day-to-day basis in your job is a starting point. But including effective accomplishments for your positions show what kind of value you're capable of adding to an employer. Measurable accomplishments (i.e., increased sales 40%) are great, but also consider including some of the less tangible things you've done which changed your employer's performance for the better. Did you create and implement processes where none existed? Were you able to help develop people on your staff through training and mentoring?

6. Avoid the personal stuff. In the United States, don't include your picture, date of birth, social security number. Likewise, leave out religious affiliation or anything else that invites illegal or inappropriate scrutiny by an employer. If you're applying for a job which may involve long hours or travel, and you volunteer on your resume that you have 3 children, a biased reader of your resume may start wondering, "Geez, is this person going to miss a lot of work days or have to leave early due to day care issues?"

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.

The Recruiter Only Rings Once...

You're plugging away at work, and your cell phone buzzes. You're busy as hell, and you decide to let the call roll over to voicemail.

You get a break about ten minutes later, and you check your phone. It's a recruiter from a staffing firm reaching out to you to talk about a job opportunity they're working on, and he said he'd like to talk with you about it because you might be a good fit for the position.

The fact of the matter is, you're tied up right now, you're perfectly content in your job, and the last thing you feel like doing is taking 15 minutes talking to some recruiter about a job when you're trying to keep above water.

Let's take a moment to talk about staffing firm recruiters and what they do; these men and women are hired by companies to find talent for open positions. They get paid by their client companies when they place somebody on the job. So, when they get an open position, they go through the effort of trying to find the job candidate most likely to fill that role, so that they can make a few bucks then move onto the next position. It's their job to keep a pulse on who's out there in the job market, and who might be a good fit for their openings.

Staffing firm recruiters might find about you in one of several different ways:

• LinkedIn. Staffing firms buy subscriptions to LinkedIn, they can see who has an applicable profile, whether the candidate is looking or not.
• Job Boards. Monster, Career Builder, etc... any place that an active job seeker might post their resume, a recruiter comb for candidates.
• Referrals. One of their clients or other candidates might drop your name as a qualified candidate. Somebody staked their reputation on your name.
• Cold Calling. This doesn't happen quite as much as it used to, but it still exists. A recruiter looking for a computer programmer, for example,  will call into a company asking for the IT department, and then strike up a conversation with whoever answers the phone.

The bottom line is, a recruiter will reach out to you to talk about a job opportunity, and how you react may impact whether you will be considered for this – or any other – job they work on.

Going back to the scenario detailed above, it's easy to get annoyed at recruitment calls, especially if you aren't expecting them. But try to think about the value in taking or returning the call.

• Recruiters are human, too. They have feelings and emotions, and if you treat them with dignity and respect, you're going to make a better impression and probably establish a positive working relationship - even if you aren't interested in a job change.
• Recruiters are doing their job. They need to generate candidates for their open jobs, so their call is all in a day's work. 
• Everyone the recruiter talks helps build their network. The old adage recruiters follow is that everybody you meet is a candidate, a client, or a referral. If you can be one of the three, you'll raise your value to the recruiter.
• Aloof candidates pay the price. Candidates who never return calls or act annoyed by recruiters usually get placed on a "do not call" list as unresponsive or difficult. Just try to remember, your job may be secure today, but your company may go through layoffs tomorrow and you could be on the chopping block. If you blow off a recruiter enough times, then you try calling them only when you need something, they'll probably be disinclined to want to work with you.

Scott Singer is the President and Founder of Insider Career Strategies Resume Writing & Career Coaching, a firm dedicated to guiding job seekers and companies through the job search and hiring process. He is a Human Resources professional and staffing expert with almost two decades of in-house corporate HR and staffing firm experience, and is a Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) and Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC).

Insider Career Strategies provides resume writing, LinkedIn profile development, and career coaching services, including a free resume review. You can email Scott Singer at scott.singer@insidercs.com, or via the website, www.insidercs.com.