Those who have managed a recruiting team are always asked a common question by the management, “What is the performance of your team”. As a recruiting team lead at Kites, our managers are also shot this question by paying customers as they want to know the money worth of the service. We believe recruiting is an art of finding the right talent at the right time. The contours of the “right candidate” definition fall partially on the objective side and partially on the subject side of the manager’s perception.
In the 15+ year of experience working in the recruiting space, I have seen the performance issue come up regularly at different levels. Most of the times decisions are very objective and based on real issues. Sometimes management has not always been correct in hiring hard-working recruiters. They later realize the mistake but it is at a point where opportunities are lost. Most of the managers look at recruiters performance based on the revenue brought in compared to the spend that takes place to sustain that resource. Revenue brought in is easy to find out if it is a staffing firm, recruiting shop or the good old body shops. It becomes a little bit more complicated when the recruiting is being done in a non-IT company, consulting firm or product company. Managers are mostly correct in thinking it straight forward as they are responsible for the budgets and profitability of their division. A more detailed analysis is to be conducted before jumping into such conclusions.
A recruiter’s job is to present the right candidate at the right time in the right rate/salary range. The right candidate should be close to the actual job description given initially by the clients. Recruiters sometimes produce huge numbers and overshadow some recruiters who are not very focused on producing large quantities. A simple rule of recruiting is that you cannot place 2 candidates in 1 position. So if a recruiter is submitting 4 candidates for a Sr. Java role does not mean a recruiter submitting just 1 for that role has not worked hard enough or is less competent. What will matter is who is closest to the actual job and who has the most chance of getting the position. The recruiter who presented just 1 candidate would have already rejected 5 mediocre candidates and just submitted the best of the lot. The Recruiter who presented 4 candidates did not care much about detailing and submitted candidates which are not local, H1 with visa issues, outside the rate range but close, not from the same vertical and more.
In such situations, the 1 candidate submitted stands a good chance to close the deal. I would like to point out a classic situation here which supports the “numbers recruiter”. In VMS situations sometimes the hiring managers and the primary vendor are so busy managing multiple positions, they just shortlist the first 2-3 good candidates and start the interview. They do not care about looking at the 8th or 9th candidate that was submitted late in the process. In this case, the best candidate might have been the 8th candidate but because he was submitted late, the candidate did not get the right eyeball and thus did not make it.
The point I am making here is not to make the number of submissions as the judging parameter for performance. This can only become a parameter when the recruiter is performing below average and is not even able to touch the basic numbers over the course of month or two. Also, the number of placements is always not the best parameter as placements might be missed due to multiple factors which are not within the recruiter’s control like a hold over the client, candidate backing out, client not considering the candidate and many more. If the recruiter is giving decent submissions regularly and is submitting 5-8 good candidates/ week then he should not be counted out. With my experience, I can say that these days the average has fallen compared to pre-Trump era. The clampdown on H1’s and other foreign work authorizations have made the supply restricted so where a good recruiter used to submit 10-12 good candidates earlier, these days the same recruiter is able to submit 7-8 good candidates only.
Kites Consulting believes in giving an average of 10 candidates/week and 2 good submissions per day. We have stood the test of time and have been able to achieve this number consistently. There have been times when we have not been successful but have presented strong reasons for the same. We try to present candidates who are not rejected easily. Candidates which will be presented to the customer or have a chance for an interview.
