Unless you work at Zoom or Peloton, odds are your hiring plan has been downsized or halted this year. There’s no better time than a hiring freeze to apply a #DiversityandInclusion lens to your hiring data and the practices that shape them./1
Traditional recruiting metrics can reveal - and even incentivize - behaviors that are in direct tension with diversity and, thus, quality. Here are 3 measurements to rethink/2:
#1-Time to fill/hire. Time to fill/hire are the most popular recruiter KPIs. Time to fill answers how long a req remained open before somebody was hired. Hiring managers & the business need this number to be low so teams are operating at full capacity./3
The race to keep this number low can enable shortcuts in decision making that breed status quo, similarity and other biases. In turn, the chances of hiring someone who thinks differently or looks different on paper from the prototypical hire dwindle./4
Time to hire is a better metric. It assesses how long it took the hired candidate to move from applicant to offer. Long time to hire can reveal misalignments and inefficiencies in the recruiting process./5
But time to hire falls short because it only gives insight into the process and experience for the one person who actually got the job. It’s a metric that’s reserved for those who are successful. We need candidate-centric metrics like candidate idle time./6
Every day that a candidate waits for a reply to their application, take-home exercise or interview performance is a day that adds to their time feeling in limbo./7
Each day that they wait to be scheduled for the next hiring stage is a day of uncertainty about your organization’s talent processes and about the sincerity of your interest in them. This ambiguity can contribute to belonging breakdowns./8
Inclusive hiring demands that all candidates believe that their time was respected. Minimizing candidate idle time is especially critical when the outcome isn’t positive and can help preserve your org's employer reputation within underrepresented communities./9
If you're fortunate to be hiring during this pandemic, minimizing candidate idle time warrants urgent attention so you’re not contributing to the stress and uncertainty folks are already struggling with./10
#2-Resume screen pass-through rate. If you’re #DiversityandInclusion-minded, you’re hopefully already splicing hiring funnel pass-through rates by candidate demographics to understand where you have outcome disparities as a function of identity./11
But have you paid attention to the overall applicant pass-through rate at the resume screen? If this rate is too low, it might suggest that recruiters are systematically dismissing large populations of applicants./12
There’s a ton of riffraff at the top of the funnel - folks and even bots that submit applications to roles they’re in no way qualified for. This is especially true in passive candidate pools (job boards, company website)./13
As a matter of practicality, recruiters pay more attention to candidates they’ve sourced personally or those who were referred by employees. Some counterproductive biases can kick in here: If a candidate is so great, why didn't we find them? Why don't they know anyone here?/14
Of course, the problem with reflexively rejecting applicants from lesser known sources is that great candidates exist everywhere. (I applied to all 3 of my in-house DEI roles via LinkedIn...) And the ones that add to diversity are more likely to be off recruiters’ radars./15
Pay attention to this number. If it’s <10%, chat with your recruiters about how to get it high enough to instill confidence that candidates from all pools are being fairly considered./16
#3-Offer accepted. Traditionally, the talent handoff from recruiter to another HR team member happens once an employment contract is signed. What if recruiters had more skin in the game? After all, mis-hires happen./17
Hiring managers are ultimately accountable for their hiring decisions but what if recruiters were more quantitatively invested in the success of the people they brought to your company?/18
What if they shared responsibility with L&D, HRBPs & others for new hires’ ability to get fully ramped within the amount of time expected by the business?/19
It’s great to bring new talent in efficiently but if they can’t get up to speed quickly enough to add their distinct value to the company - or, worse yet, leave before they're profitable - recruiting practices should be examined./20
When these things happen, recruiters may be using the wrong proxies for potential during their sourcing and screening activities. Honing the signals being used to predict a successful hire is a lot easier when recruiters share accountability for new hire success./21
As Peter Drucker says, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Why not use this time to dissect your data & resolve the false dichotomy b/w traditional & “diversity” hiring? When the economy rebounds, you'll be prepared to hire the best people out there. Diversity included./end
