Time to fill is the most important metric for a recruiter or a talent acquisition professional. Business opens up a requisition. And, more often than not, they wanted the person to join as of yesterday. It invariably means that finding a good candidate and getting them to join becomes critical. And, doing so superfast is important.
About a couple of decades ago, the job search process for a candidate would end the moment one received an offer. However, these days the actual job search for a candidate starts only after a person receives an offer. Many a times, we see candidates, especially millennials, evaluate multiple job options only after they get the first offer. Which means that having 2-3 offers before joining a company has become the norm, not an exception.
Consequently, this results in a lot of offer shopping with people trying to maximise their chances of landing a better profile, better brand or just more money. Such ghosting, wherein a candidate does not join the organization on the committed day and time, is frustrating for a recruiter. Simply because he/she will have to start the search process all over again. This is really hard on the business/recruitment team.
Why is improving offer to joining ratio critical?
Offer to joining ratios effectively impact the time to fill. Let's say you’re able to get a person when the notice period is 90 days. The candidate drops out on the 60th day and you have started your evaluation process, you are more likely pushed back by the days of the evaluation for the next candidate.
Add 30-90 days for another right candidate offer and for them to join. Yet, there’s no guarantee that the candidate would join. Joining no shows are a huge issue as the problem is compounded by another 30-90 days or whatever it took to bring the candidate in. Now, this is significant business loss for the internal customer and the bottom line impact the employee could have made in their role gets delayed quite a lot. This adds pressure on the rest of the business team leading to a higher chance of an attrition risk. Because there is no sight of a joiner for the role, there are high risks of people compromising in the quality of the hire.
Hence, improving offer to joining ratio becomes significant to impact both top line and bottom line of the business.
How can employee referrals help?
It’s highly important to find the right source to mitigate this problem.
- From our experience running employee referrals for the past 7 years, we have seen that the association of an employee in the recruitment process brings in a level of warmth both for the candidate as well as the organisation
- When you’ve an employee involved at different stages of the candidate evaluation, it results in the candidate developing a bond and a sense of obligation both towards the friend referring them as well as the organization
- Naturally, any candidate is less likely to reject an organization where they feel a sense of belonging, had a great candidate experience and have a good friend who had helped them with the offer
Leveraging this obligation is critical if you are looking to improve time to fill and offer to joining ratios.
Our customers typically see a 10-12 percent increase in the offer to joining ratio through employee referrals as compared to other sources of hiring. Their ability to leverage employee’s warmth and connection with the candidate is a key reason. Of course, key components like role and compensation always matters. Nevertheless, if your employee is able to fill a crucial role, the offer ends up being a differentiating factor for the candidate.
So, how can employees help improve offer to joining ratio?
Your employee is a brand ambassador for your organisation. A brand ambassador, who goes out to his/her community and says ‘My organisation is a great place to work and I would love for you to come and join me here.’ This is word of mouth marketing. This is better than advertising job roles by the recruiting team.
Additionally, employees engaging with the candidate throughout the candidate evaluation process provides both comfort and transparency. It helps the candidate to learn more about the organisation. Candidates start to appreciate the fact that the employee is going out of their way to help in their career switch. This builds a very strong obligation which makes them want to do their absolute best and be fair to your opportunity.
If the candidate chooses not to join your organisation, they understand that it might put their friend in an embarrassing situation. It's easy to ghost on a faceless corporate entity. It’s harder to ghost on a dear friend who has put in a lot of effort in getting you an opportunity.
Ultimately, the offer to joining ratios improve by 10-12 percent and joining no shows dip to almost single digits. I would encourage you to leverage your employees on an active basis through the entire candidate lifecycle. A good referral system that helps employees communicate with the candidate throughout the referral process will make this effortless. And, once that happens you can see significant improvement in offer to joining ratio driving down time to fill.
Suggested Read : Employee Referrals for Retention