According to the 2024 Employ Job Seeker Nation Report, beyond compensation, job seekers are primarily motivated by career advancement (52%) and greater work flexibility or remote work opportunities (49%). 

• How are you seeing growing companies promote career advancement and flexibility to keep candidates central to their hiring process and compete more effectively with larger organizations? 

Karen A. Young, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, President/Founder, HR Resolutions, LLC

The Job Seeker Nation Report clearly supports the position that job seekers are hungry for a culture that fits their needs, whether it’s career advancement, diversity, or flexibility. People are not moving as readily today for just a few cents, but they ARE moving to work somewhere or do something they can enjoy and produce their best work.

The more employers promote these items as “wins” when recruiting, the more candidates they will attract. Our job, as recruiters, is to speak to the good at the company (positives) instead of the negatives (our job requirements). This was a lesson I learned years ago (a really, really long time ago) when I began my career in personnel, and it has stuck with me. Use this opportunity to continue your brand message — you certainly put your best foot forward in seeking customers; HR and recruiters have the same responsibility when seeking candidates.

We recently completed our own recruiting assignment through JazzHR. Our job posts always include our Core Values — and we live those values. While we knew much of the work needed once hired, we focused more on how the person would fit with the existing dream team. Then we went one step further — we were prepared to pivot in any number of directions so that OUR job would speak to the candidate’s interests. Lastly and just as importantly, we wanted to make sure our team was a fit for the candidate. That’s how you grow loyalty — how you grow your dream team. 

Smaller organizations have many more advantages in terms of providing flexibility. Look at our own position mentioned above. It started as an HR Coordinator — our offer went out as an HR and Operations Specialist. The responsibilities morphed to meet the needs of the business and the candidate. 

Hiring should be all about fit and not just job specifications. To grow a stellar team, you need to determine how your recruiting supports your mission, vision, and values. It must all be tied together to help make a cohesive team and successful employees.

About HR Resolutions

HR Resolutions strengthens companies through expert HR strategy and services. We are committed to working side-by-side with clients to create strong, drama-free, and productive workplaces. HR Resolutions saves you time and money. We help reduce risks and increase your effectiveness by delivering a savvy human resource strategy that produces real results. From hiring to firing, policies to payroll, coaching to recruiting, if it has to do with HR, we can help. For more information, visit hrresolutions.com.

Ginger Miley, Ph.D., Talent Manager, Performentor, LLC

As companies grow, promoting career advancement and flexibility has become critical to attracting and retaining top talent.

Unlike larger organizations, growing companies have the unique advantage of creating new positions organically as they grow. This natural growth allows for exciting career advancement opportunities, making it an attractive prospect for ambitious candidates. 

Here are some trends we’re seeing regarding career paths:

• Current candidates are not just looking for a job; they are seeking a career trajectory at a company with a mission and core values that align with the candidate’s own values.
• Career path maps have transitioned from a ‘nice to have’ to a fundamental expectation for job seekers. 
• Growing companies can demonstrate commitment to employee development and long-term success by outlining possible career paths. 

While companies cannot predict the exact leadership roles that will be needed in 3 – 5 years, strategic foresight is necessary to compete effectively in today’s job market. 

Work arrangements are another key area where flexibility can be strategically leveraged.

Here are some trends we’re seeing regarding work flexibility expectations:

• Companies can offer hybrid, remote, or in-office work options depending on the role and the specific responsibilities.
• Hybrid models are particularly popular as they combine the best of both remote and in-office work. 
• Additionally, flexible hybrid schedules appeal to the diverse needs of employees, which enhances job satisfaction and productivity. 
• Tailoring work arrangements to fit the nature of the job and the needs of the employee can be a powerful differentiator.

By strategically promoting career growth plans and offering flexible work arrangements, growing companies can effectively compete with larger organizations and keep candidates central to their growth strategy.

About Performentor 

Performentor provides fractional human resources using our Unleash People Energy™ Framework for Human Resources, which helps business owners, founders, and leaders create dynamic workplaces that propel growth. Our people energy principles challenge long-held beliefs that organizations must make painful people/profit tradeoffs in order to be successful. We challenge and replace these long-held beliefs with purposeful, people-centric organizational reframes from our Unleash People Energy™ framework. The result? Engaged and empowered workplaces where great people are energized to do great work. Learn more at performentor.com.

Anastasia Pshegodskaya, Director, Talent Acquisition, Remote

As Director of Talent Acquisition at Remote, I’ve observed a significant shift in how growing companies adapt their recruitment strategies to meet evolving expectations of employees, particularly when competing with larger organizations. It’s not surprising that career advancement is a top concern for candidates. 

Progressive companies are tapping into this trend by transparently mapping potential career paths during the hiring process. They are not just filling a position, but offering a journey of growth and learning. This approach not only attracts talent, but also fosters long-term engagement and retention. Employees also want flexibility, but the distinction between remote work and flexibility is crucial. Remote work refers to the ability to work from anywhere. It has opened up a global talent pool for companies and allowed individuals to seek opportunities beyond their immediate geographical locations. 

On the other hand, flexibility — often manifested as asynchronous work schedules — addresses the when of work. It allows employees to manage their work hours around personal commitments, enhancing work-life balance and overall job satisfaction. Forward-thinking companies promote both aspects by implementing robust remote work policies and flexible scheduling options. 

This dual approach positions these companies as attractive employers and enables them to compete effectively with larger corporations that offer higher salaries but less personalization in work arrangements. As companies navigate the complexities of the modern hiring landscape, those who can authentically integrate career advancement opportunities with genuine flexibility are set to thrive by attracting and retaining top talent in an increasingly competitive market.

About Remote

Talent is everywhere — opportunity is not. Remote’s mission is to create opportunities everywhere, empower employers to find and hire the best talent, and enable individuals to build financial and personal freedom. Businesses worldwide use Remote to hire, manage, and pay their globally distributed workforces simply and compliantly. Remote was founded in 2019 by Job van der Voort and Marcelo Lebre and is backed by leading investors, including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Accel, Sequoia, Index Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, General Catalyst, and B Capital. Learn more at Remote.com.

Understanding job seeker preferences, motivations, and behaviors across generational lines is essential for growing companies looking to connect more effectively with candidates and stay competitive in a tight labor market.

We’ve asked HR professionals and recruiters their advice on how to bridge the gap in generational recruiting and hiring. From creating diverse interview panels to advertising mentorship opportunities, discover how these strategies have reshaped recruiting dynamics in small- and medium-sized businesses.

• Create Diverse Interview Panels
• Target Multiple Job Search Sites
• Use LinkedIn’s Cross-Generational Reach
• Advertise Mentorship Opportunities
• Diversify Recruitment Platforms
• Implement Generation-Spanning Mentorship
• Pair Seasoned and Young Employees

Create Diverse Interview Panels

One of the best ways to bridge those gaps is to create interview panels with representatives from several generations. Each generation brings its own unique skills and experiences to connect with candidates and assess cultural fit from their distinct lens. You get a more well-rounded evaluation of candidates and a chance to show them how much your business values diversity, so it’s a win-win.

Robert Kaskel, Chief People Officer, Checkr

Target Multiple Job Search Sites

For our teams, it’s all about looking at where our candidates are most likely to be applying and having a presence there. For example, simply looking past the typical sites like Indeed for some hires, but also understanding that a specific generation may only use Indeed when it comes to job hunting. And the more approaches you try, the more data you’ll have to know which platforms or websites to advertise on for openings specifically.

Tracey Beveridge, HR Director, Personnel Checks

Advertise Mentorship Opportunities

At Dayjob Recruitment, we’ve adopted a unique strategy of highlighting professional development and mentorship in our job ads. This approach draws candidates from various generations, keen on growth within the manufacturing and construction sectors. We showcase mentorship opportunities, appealing to both seasoned professionals and new entrants, fostering a team environment rich in knowledge-sharing. This strategy has led to more cohesive, innovative teams, driving success for our clients and setting us apart in the recruitment space.

For instance, we’ve tailored our recruitment campaigns to highlight the mentorship culture within our client companies, showcasing how experienced professionals share their knowledge with younger team members. This has not only helped in attracting a multi-generational workforce, but also in fostering a team dynamic where knowledge sharing and innovation are at the forefront. The impact has been profound, leading to more collaborative teams that blend traditional expertise with fresh perspectives, ultimately enhancing our project outcomes and client satisfaction.

Ana Alipat, Recruitment Team Lead, Dayjob Recruitment

Use LinkedIn’s Cross-Generational Reach

Post job postings on LinkedIn. This remains the only platform viewed as a professional space across all generations who use it to find job opportunities. By posting on LinkedIn on your company page, you’ll attract candidates from multiple generations without having to do anything unique.

Jarir Mallah, Human Resources Manager, Ling App

Implement Generation-Spanning Mentorship

Having an intentional strategy around pairings for mentorship programs and ensuring that a diverse span of participants are involved drives generationally diverse partnerships. These partnerships have a greater potential of developing generation-spanning relationships when there is a stated intent of the program to have a positive and mutually beneficial result.

Desiree Smith, Director, Talent Acquisition

Diversify Recruitment Platforms

Without being too broad with a response, I’d say hiring with intent on a per-platform or per-approach basis, rather than just sticking to one option. For example, maintaining a full openings section on your website, posting vacancies on social media and selected platforms externally. Essentially, being everywhere that your target hires are, and being active in your efforts — not just posting a job and leaving a platform alone for 12 months.

Wendy Makinson, HR Manager, Joloda Hydraroll

Pair Seasoned and Young Employees

Recognizing the different age groups brings diverse perspectives to the table, we paired seasonal employees with the younger hires and vice versa. The seasoned employees shared their wealth of experience and industry insights, while the younger hires brought in fresh ideas and technological proficiency. It not only enhances communication, but also contributes to a more creative and dynamic work environment, ultimately benefiting our recruitment strategies.

Saritha Fernandes, Talent Acquisition Manager

•  “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford 

Today, we’re thrilled to announce that JazzHR is now fully integrated with Justworks, a technology company on a mission to help entrepreneurs and businesses grow with confidence. Justworks handles the nitty-gritty of payroll, benefits, compliance, and HR, so you have more time to learn, grow, and seek something worthwhile.

What This Integration Is All About

The new JazzHR integration with Justworks makes onboarding employees faster and more efficient. JazzHR customers with active Justworks accounts can seamlessly import new hires directly into the platform, giving them quicker access to automated hiring and onboarding tools, and critical reporting over time.

When an employee is marked as hired within JazzHR, HR Admins automatically receive reminders to invite the new hire to Justworks, where candidate information is pre-populated. This makes your job for onboarding new hires simpler and ensures your employee is ready to start on day one.

The Value of the JazzHR and Justworks Integration

This latest integration with Justworks ensures you can easily connect with the HR tools you use every day. With rich candidate profile data sent directly from JazzHR to Justworks, you can save valuable time and effort by eliminating manual data entry. Plus, JazzHR experts are there to support you as you get the integration up and running.  

Breaking it down, with the JazzHR integration into Justworks, you can:

• Leverage the power of a connected HR system
  By turning on connected workflows, you can easily sync candidate data from JazzHR into Justworks. Reminders to invite candidates to Justworks help your team never miss a beat. 

• Onboard employees faster
  New hire data seamlessly flows from JazzHR into Justworks, with no manual entry and no errors.

• Tap into software purpose-built for small businesses
  You need software that’s made for your company size and complexity. JazzHR and Justworks together give you a powerful combination that’s easy to learn and easy to use.

How Does the Integration Work?

The integration does all the work for you. And it supports multiple candidate types, including full-time, part-time, intern, contractor, and temporary candidates. Within JazzHR, whenever a candidate is moved into full-time or part-time hired, Justworks automatically pulls in the following data from JazzHR:

• Member type
• First name
• Last name
• Title
• Home email
• Start date

It’s that easy. And set up is a breeze. See how you can easily set up the integration between JazzHR and Justworks.

Start Moving Forward with JazzHR and Justworks

Find out how you can tap into this winning combination. Learn more about how JazzHR and Justworks HR tools work together to support your success. View the Justworks listing on the JazzHR Marketplace and get started today.

Moderated by Katie Ballantyne, VP, Customer Success Operations, this session was tailored to JazzHR customers and featured insights from these Executive Leaders on the hiring environment, recruitment software for SMBs, customer experiences, and product investment and innovation. Take a look at some of the top takeaways from this discussion and watch key moments from clips shared here. 

Recruiting Challenges, Insights, and the Employ Brand

During their conversation, Katie and Lucy discussed multiple topics within recruiting today that affect small businesses. Lucy highlighted the most pressing challenges based on data from the Employ Recruiter Nation Report and shared strategies to improve candidate quality and hiring speed. This includes focusing on scaling hiring up or down to meet business needs, optimizing recruitment technology for your growing company, and leveraging data-driven decision making. 

• Katie and Lucy also discussed the Employ brand and the company’s vision to more clearly build out an overarching brand that is relevant to the experiences of customers, aligned with each product line, differentiated in the market, and supported by research.

View Lucy Zarlengo, Chief Marketing Officer, discuss the relationship of the Employ brand to JazzHR and what’s happening now to more clearly articulate the brand. 

Focusing on the JazzHR Customer Experience

Chris Stewart joined the organization in mid-2023 as Chief Customer Officer, and started by going on an in-depth customer listening tour. The conversations he had with JazzHR customers have helped inform where to focus on this year to elevate the customer experience. Watch Chris Stewart discuss two key initiatives that Employ is focusing on this year for JazzHR customers:

Sometimes it seems easier to stick with spreadsheets rather than invest in new technologies and processes. But with the right approach in place, you can attract top talent, reduce recruiting costs, and focus on growing your business. Let’s take a look at why hiring speed matters and what you can do to improve hiring time in your company.

But the hiring process can take a significant amount of time and resources, which can slow down your regular business operations. This can be especially difficult for small businesses, whose employees are already wearing several hats, including standing in for the role you’re trying to fill. 

Today, in a highly competitive market, it’s also imperative to work on refining your hiring process, so you can maintain an edge against others hiring candidates like yours.

In this blog, we will discuss three ways to make your hiring process faster, while maintaining your quality standards. These three strategies are tried and tested by other SMBs, and can guide hiring for your own business.

#1: Embracing Recruitment Automation

Automating your recruitment process is one of the most effective ways to reduce repetitive hiring tasks and streamline hiring in your company. It also empowers your hiring managers to focus on high-quality, strategic hires by spending more time nurturing candidates. 

Some key benefits of automation include:

• Reducing time to hire: By automating tasks like screening resumes and scheduling interviews, you can significantly reduce the time spent on repetitive activities.
• Improving process quality: Automation tools help to standardize processes, ensuring consistency and reducing the likelihood of manual errors.
• Leveraging a data-driven approach: Identifying areas of the hiring process that create bottlenecks and slow down your process can reveal areas for improvement and help you make better decisions faster.

However, it’s important to choose the right recruitment tools that make sense for the volume and complexity of your hiring process. It’s also important to make sure you strike a balance between automating tasks that don’t add value and focusing on areas that still require a human touch, like nurturing candidates.

#2: Improving Collaboration

Making sure you and your team are on the same page when hiring someone new is key to a smooth and efficient hiring process. Here are some ways you can improve collaboration for those involved:

Define roles and responsibilities: Clarify the expectations for each team member involved in the hiring process. This can help eliminate confusion and ensure everyone is working together efficiently.

Standardize the interview and evaluation process: Aligning your team on interview priorities and questions can streamline the decision-making process and result in faster, better-informed hires.

Centralize communication in the recruiting platform: Take advantage of your recruiting software to consolidate feedback about candidates and stay in sync on every applicant.

Not only is a high level of communication necessary for team cohesion, but your candidates will appreciate staying in the loop with consistent feedback.

• Remember, seamless collaboration often requires investments in training and technology, but the benefits of increased efficiency and better hires are worth the effort.

#3: Enhancing the Candidate Experience

An impressive candidate experience not only increases the likelihood of attracting quality talent for your small business, but also contributes to a faster hiring process. Here are some ways to enhance the candidate experience:

Write clear and concise job descriptions: Make sure your job posting accurately reflects the role you’re trying to fill. A well-written job description can help to attract the best candidates and reduce the number of unsuitable applications.

Optimize the application process: A user-friendly, mobile-optimized applicant tracking system can help to streamline the hiring process and ensure you don’t lose potential hires due to cumbersome application requirements.

Communicate with candidates: Timely and respectful communication makes candidates feel valued and can increase their enthusiasm for your company.

Hit the Ground Running

The three strategies highlighted above allow growing companies to focus on improving their hiring process and practices. By automating tasks, improving collaboration, and developing a strong candidate experience, your team can take hiring to the next level and attract talent that will deliver for your business.

If you’re a small business owner or hiring manager looking to streamline your hiring process, JazzHR can make a big difference. Contact JazzHR today for a free demo today.

Learning from experts on how to make hiring more effective and efficient is essential within the current labor market. During the recent From the Experts: Making Recruiting More Effective in 2024 webinar, a panel of three talent practitioners discussed how to optimize recruiting strategies for this year. These panelists included:

• Rachel Perry, Manager, Customer Enablement​, JazzHR, an Employ Solution​
• Michelle Stone, Director, Enterprise Customer Success, Jobvite, an Employ Solution
• Josh Jones, Manager, Talent Acquisition, Employ Inc.

During this insightful session, each practitioner shared insights and innovative recruitment strategies to tackle the challenges encountered by recruiting professionals today.

How to Tackle Recruitment Challenges

The conversation centered on the difficulties facing talent acquisition professionals right now — focusing primarily on the scarcity of qualified candidates and the intense competition for talent. 

Each panelist advocated for the need for faster, more efficient hiring processes, noting that recruiters must adapt to the evolving recruitment landscape and employ strategies to enhance and optimize their recruiting strategies. 

To enhance efficiency, the role of technology and innovation is more important than ever. Recruitment technology, analytics, AI integration, and data-driven decision-making are not just buzzwords — they are principles that should be embraced by recruiting teams.

Strategies for Effective Recruiting

The driving force behind effective recruitment is efficient data-driven strategies. Panelists focused on two major strategies, including stakeholder feedback and developing candidate personas.

Michelle Stone highlighted the importance of aligning talent acquisition goals with the executive team and investing in existing employees for high-quality hires that already are dedicated to your organization. 

Josh Jones provided valuable insights on creating candidate personas using feedback from candidates and recent hires. He recommended creating at least two candidate personas for each role and tailoring job descriptions accordingly, enhancing their appeal to potential candidates. 

By segmenting candidate pools and tailoring engagement strategies to fit each audience, recruiting teams can build a framework and greatly improve their overall quality of hire. Rachel Perry further suggested researching competitors’ job descriptions to broaden understanding and improve approachability.

The Human Side of Hiring

The conversation also highlighted the personalized nature of experiences within recruitment. Michelle Stone emphasized the significance of texts and emails as a more efficient candidate communication method. She also proposed segmenting candidates into key talent, strategic, and relationship audiences for effective audience engagement.

Josh Jones emphasized treating active and passive candidates differently, and indicated the importance of uniformity within interview teams, while Rachel Perry noted the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in recruitment.

Harnessing the Right Recruitment Technology 

The discussion concluded with the importance of recruiting analytics and metrics, harnessing purpose-built technology in recruiting, and providing a top-notch onboarding experience.

By highlighting strategies that can help companies adapt in the current hiring environment, the panelists provided actionable takeaways that companies can use to streamline and optimize their recruiting process. 

Find out how to improve your hiring efforts — no matter what kind of roadblocks you face — and drive efficiencies in your recruiting function by optimizing strategies for the coming year.

Watch the on-demand webinar now.

Recruiting outlook

Based on data from the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report, more than half of talent professionals (57%) believe within the next 12 months, hiring new employees will be at least somewhat challenging, mostly because there are not enough quality candidates (58%), because of competition from other employers (46%), fewer recruiters or recruiting resources (43%), and more employees leaving the organization (41%).

The challenge of not enough quality candidates is anticipated more within SMBs (63%) than at large enterprises (48%); however, more than 4 in 10 recruiters from enterprise companies believe they will have more open roles to fill (42%) versus 23% at SMBs.

Recruiting volatility

When it comes to fluctuations in the coming year, recruiters have mixed opinions. While one in three recruiters do not believe the next 12 months will be volatile in recruiting, half of all talent acquisition professionals do think hiring will be turbulent into 2024.

The future of recruiting

At the same time, HR decision makers are extremely optimistic about the future of recruiting. An incredible 86% of talent practitioners shared that they are positive about what the future of talent acquisition holds, while only 8% are not. So, while volatility is expected, optimism remains.

Despite the turbulence, recruiting professionals should be encouraged by recent trends. Employ data shows that applications per job are up over the last year across companies of all sizes, and more than half of all recruiters expect their teams to grow in the next year, with nearly two-thirds expecting their recruiting budgets to increase.

A Look at the Current Recruiting Landscape

Navigating recruiting challenges in the current hiring landscape takes grit, resolve, and determination. While more than half (53%) of talent acquisition professionals feel their job is more stressful today than a year ago, this number has actually dropped by more than 10 percentage points from just last year.

Those talent practitioners who indicate a high level of stress today say it’s due to not enough qualified candidates (45%), competition from other employers (35%), more open roles to fill (34%), fewer resources to support hiring (33%), a lack of AI-powered recruiting technologies (30%), and more employees leaving the organization (30%).

For those talent professionals who do not feel their recruiting job is more stressful than it was a year ago (44%), over one-third say it’s because of a stable number of open roles to fill (38%), the ability to meet candidate expectations (37%), the same number or fewer employees are leaving the organization (36%), plenty of qualified candidates (36%), and more recruiters or additional recruiting resources (36%).

Recruiting Challenges

When it comes to the most significant challenges talent teams face today, there is a fairly even split among three primary areas:

• Not enough people to fill open positions (31% in 2023 versus 56% in 2022)
• Competition from other employers (30% in 2023 versus 54% in 2022)
• Not able to compete with salary requirements (25% in 2023 versus 33% in 2022)

However, there are positive trends in this data. The significant drop of more than 20 points in the first two areas means that employers are finding more talented candidates overall and that they are competing more effectively with other employers.

Ian Creamer
Vice President and Global Head of Talent Attraction, Guidewire Software

“There is so much uncertainty in the market. The expectation of hiring managers and leaders is that the tide of layoffs should equal much easier access to talent and that’s not always the case. We hire in the technology space and truly top talent remains as hard to hire as ever. Candidates are still showing up with multiple offers already in hand.”

For recruiting professionals and HR decision makers, getting a handle on key metrics and understanding where any bottlenecks may exist is essential for improving hiring performance.

Based on data from the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report, below are a few notable benchmark metrics across the recruiting funnel that companies can use to compare to their own talent acquisition efforts, and improve recruiting funnel health, efficiency, and performance.

Applications Per Job

Nearly 7 in 10 talent acquisition professionals report that their current volume of hiring is greater compared to last year. This is supported by Employ’s proprietary database of more than 21,000 customers. During the last 12 months, the average number of applicants has climbed across all company sizes, including enterprise, and small-and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

With higher numbers of applications, the percentage change of applications submitted over the last 12 months is also up, indicating a positive trend for employers.

Time to Fill

Time to fill represents how long it takes a company to fill a job opening, from the date a job requisition is posted until a candidate accepts an offer. Simply, it’s the time it takes to find and hire a new employee.

The average time to fill for companies of all sizes is 47.5 days. While time to hire for most organizations has historically hovered around 40 days, during the last 12 months, this number has been higher. 

Because hiring is a game of speed, it is critical to determine areas where you can reduce time to hire overall, including shortening feedback loops internally and moving candidates quickly through each step of the hiring process.

Breaking it down by company size over the last 12 months, time to fill for SMBs typically is a few days longer than at enterprise companies, at 49 and 46 days, respectively. This makes sense, given that it can be more challenging for growing companies to attract qualified candidates if they have a lesser-known employer brand or lack the right mix of tools to streamline their hiring process. 

Benchmarking time to hire based on industry is also critical for talent teams because it tells them how quickly companies in their own sector are hiring.  Media, manufacturing, and education have experienced the highest times for filling open roles, while healthcare, retail, and professional services, have the lowest time to hire during the latest 12-month period.

Applicant to Interview Ratio

The conversion rate from applicants to scheduled interview is what is known as applicant to interview ratio. Based on Employ data, enterprise companies have a higher number of total applications received compared to SMBs for each interview offered. This is consistent over the last 12 months. 

When looking at the conversion rate from applicants to scheduled interview, enterprise companies have a much lower applicant to interview ratio than SMBs. With considerable competition for open jobs in certain industries, and large numbers of applicants, especially in the technology sector, it can be challenging for recruiters to manage the high volume of applications. In the case of SMB companies, they could be receiving more qualified applicants or fewer applications overall for open roles.

Interview to Offer Ratio

Interview to offer ratio is the number of candidates on average a hiring manager must interview to make an offer. Typically, a strong interview to offer ratio is around 33%.

However, looking at the interview to offer ratio for enterprise versus small-and medium-sized businesses, it is clear that during the last 12 months, Employ customers within the enterprise segment have seen historic highs in this conversion metric, ranging between 70% – 80%. SMBs, however, have seen a much lower interview to offer ratio , which could mean a higher number of quality candidates are given opportunities for interviews or employers want to widen the field when it comes to candidates reaching the interview stage.

Most Valuable Metrics to Track

So, what are the most important or most valuable metrics to track? Almost one-third (31%) of recruiters rank quality of hire as the most valuable metric they use to track recruiting success. This is followed by time to fill (14%) and cost per hire (12%). Diversity of talent pipeline is ranked as the least valuable metric to track recruiting success by one-fourth (25%) of HR decision makers.

Most Valuable Sources of Hire

One quarter of HR decision makers ranked job boards as their most valuable sourcing channel, followed by internal hires (16%), social media (14%), employee referrals (13%) and their career website (9%).  This gives employers insight into the types of channels and sources that other companies are looking to when it comes to filling open roles in their companies.

When it comes to social channels used for sourcing, 41% of recruiters and talent acquisition professionals report that their company currently uses or plans to use LinkedIn as their primary social channel to find candidates, followed by Facebook (20%), and Twitter/X (10%).

LinkedIn outperforms other social media channels in terms of candidate quality, with more than half (52%) of HR decision makers ranking LinkedIn with the highest quality.

Start Measuring What Matters Most to Your Business

Bringing data together all in one place to see up-to-date recruiting funnel metrics, including sourcing effectiveness, application conversion rates, applicant flow, time to fill, and other key hiring metrics, enables talent acquisition professionals to help their business understand how to improve and drive efficiencies across the recruiting function.

Remember, recruiting is about speed, and knowing how to make faster, smarter decisions is how to stay competitive in an unsteady hiring environment.

Go deeper on recruiting metrics and the latest insights. Download the 2023 Employ Recruiter Nation Report: Moving Forward in Uncertainty.