Recruiters are the backbone of staffing agencies. They drive candidate outreach, communication, and interviews. It’s up to recruiters to find the best person for your job orders, in a timely manner. It’s up to recruiters to find quality candidates who aren’t going to ghost on the first day or leave mid-way through the assignment.  Recruiters drive the overall success of staffing operations. Because recruiters play a vital role at staffing agencies, being able to clearly measure recruiter performance is essential, including being able to measure gross margin per recruiter. 

Your ATS system is not just a tool used to find and place candidates on an assignment, it can be a critical tool for establishing recruiter performance benchmarks and measuring overall activities and outcomes. 

In this article, we will look at key metrics for measuring recruiter performance, how owners and managers can utilize their ATS for visibility, and lastly, we will explore recruiter gamification (because who says you can’t have a little fun along the way?)

Measuring Recruiter Performance 

To measure recruiter performance, you first need to establish benchmarks. What metrics are important to your staffing agency for recruiter performance? This can be a mix of activity and performance measurements. Activity measurements would be the number of certain activities you want the recruiter to do each week, such as calls/outreach, interviews, etc. Performance measurement measures the success of the recruiter’s placements. 

Tracking Activities and Establishing Benchmarks

Activity tracking and goals help set standardized benchmarks for  recruiters. This helps the recruiters know what is expected each week and helps managers ensure goals are being met. Activities can be measured daily, weekly, monthly, etc., all depending on preference. Weekly is generally a good benchmark. 

Activities to Measure

When choosing activities to track, below are several activities you can establish benchmarks for depending on what is important for your agency.

· Calls/Outreach – Number of candidate calls/outreach 

· Interviews – Number of candidate interviews

· Submittals – Number of candidate submittals to customers

· Assignments Ending – Number of assignments ending. This might not necessarily be a metric that you establish a benchmark for, but it’s important to track so recruiters can stay on top of assignments ending and reach out to those candidates to place them at new opportunities. 

· Starts Per Week- Number of candidates starting an assignment. This metric is important because it is what helps drive revenue and brings in actual dollars for staffing agencies.  

Performance Measurement 

Performance metrics help measure recruiter performance. How are the candidates they are placing? What percentage of job orders are being filled? What is the gross margin per recruiter? These are examples of metrics that help you track individual recruiter performance and impact. 

Below are several benchmarks you can establish and track per recruiter, again depending on what is most important to your agency.

· Time to Fill – Length of time it takes for a job order to be filled

· Fill Rate – Percentage of job orders being filled

· Quality of Hire – This measures the quality of the candidates being placed. Measuring this depends on what you establish as being a quality hire. Two metrics to consider for this are Turnover Rate and No Show Rate. Turnover Rate measures the percentage of employees that leave an assignment mid-way through. No Show Rate measures the percentage of candidates that don’t show up to the job. 

· Redeployment Rate – This measures the percentage of employees that are reassigned to a new assignment. This metric is an important way to track retention. How are your recruiters at retaining candidates? It also ties back to tracking Assignments Ending. Are recruiters tracking assignments ending and reassigning those recruiters?

· Revenue/Gross Margin – This measures the revenue and gross margin per recruiter. At the end of the day, this is the most important metric because it provides clear visibility into the dollar amounts being brought in by each recruiter and how it impacts your bottom line. 

Establishing benchmarks for both activities and performance will help set clear expectations for recruiters. What you establish benchmarks for all depends on what is most important for your 

staffing agency. What activities do you want recruiters to accomplish each week? What metrics are important to you for measuring recruiter performance?

Dashboard Insights for Owners and Managers

Once you establish your benchmarks, it’s time to track. This is where your ATS system can play a vital role in your operations. See how your ATS can track the above metrics for individual performance and team performance. You and the team work out of your ATS every day, so these metrics should automatically be tracked for easy visibility. If your ATS has dashboards, see what metrics you can add to your dashboard so you can track activities and performance in real time. Visibility to these metrics is key to helping establish accountability and ensures company goals and revenue are being met. Displaying these metrics on a dashboard provides the information you need to know in a clear and concise format.

Your ATS may also have an integration with reporting tools that allow you to visualize these metrics on a dashboard and daily, weekly, and monthly metrics can be automatically sent to you.

Your ATS is a powerful tool for you to track key recruiter metrics. All of the information you need is already being inputted into your ATS. Don’t miss the opportunity to track these key metrics and see clear, real-time visibility into your staffing business.

Gamification for Recruiters

While tracking metrics is important for your business, it can also be rewarding for your recruiters. Accomplishing and exceeding goals is something to celebrate. See what gamification features your ATS might have to make meeting and exceeding goals a little more fun. Can the recruiter get a star on their dashboard or a trophy when they meet or exceed their goals? Perhaps confetti can come down on their screen! Small features in your ATS like this can make goal tracking fun and rewarding for recruiters. It also becomes a win-win. They are meeting their goals and in return, your staffing agency is meeting their goals.

Recruiter Leaderboard in Office

Providing gamification motivates recruiters to perform at a higher level. Some staffing agencies display recruiter leaderboards on a TV in their office. This helps celebrate the top monthly recruiters and motivates recruiters to try to reach the leaderboard. Staffing agencies can even provide prizes and rewards for top monthly or quarterly performing recruiters. 

Visibility into Recruiter Performance

Knowing what metrics are important to your staffing agency in measuring recruiter performance is the first step to gaining insights. Next, be sure you are taking advantage of the data in your ATS and the tools you have at your fingertips to visualize this data. Visibility into key metrics will provide instant insights into recruiter and company performance. Tracking metrics and goals doesn’t just have to be for accountability though. It can be a way to motivate recruiters to reach their goals, have fun along the way, and maybe even get rewarded for their performance, whether that is through gamification built into your ATS, company rewards given, or both. Your ATS system is a powerful too. Be sure you are taking advantage of everything it has to offer to meet and exceed your company goals and measure performance.

Want to learn more about how to track metrics and recruiter performance in an ATS? Schedule a Demo of Ultra-Staff EDGE Staffing Software to see how you can track and exceed your staffing goals with dashboards and gamification.