Putting data at the heart of your recruitment agency.

Module 3

In order to make the most out of your data, you need to first determine what your agency’s main goals are and identify the metrics that are needed to achieve these. Based on your agency’s Unique Value Proposition, strongest and weakest spots, you can determine your most vital objectives for the upcoming time period. These could include:

• Increasing profit
• Reducing time-to-hire
• Enhancing database engagement
• Increasing new business

Then, you need to select metrics that align with your company objectives. For example:

• Revenue
• Revenue per recruiter
• Forecasted Revenue
• Time to hire
• Database engagement levels
• Active clients 

Module 3: Lesson 2

These five key areas should be tracked in real-time within your recruitment CRM to enable you to grow efficiently, effectively and profitably.

With improved reporting, you can see real-time changes in your agency’s results which give you the insights needed to make quick, data-driven changes in your strategy when needed.

Access to improved data can increase your revenue per recruiter by as much as 30% - which is why it is vital you know exactly how to use your reporting for maximum impact. 

 If you’re still tracking vanity metrics like the number of calls made or emails sent, you’re focusing on the wrong things that don’t bring any real value to your agency. You need to see the impact your recruiters’ activities bring in order to adjust your strategy and their processes for better and faster results. Make sure you focus on:

Most agency owners already use some kind of recruitment reporting – after all, it would be impossible to drive agency growth without some sort of data insights and the ability to look into your agency’s performance. However, the vast majority of reporting is not of a quality that allows a true understanding of agency performance. The most common reason for this is that your current funnels are not meeting at a single source of truth – your CRM – and so the data within your reports is simply incomplete. 

What good does it do to know your candidates come from a specific job board if you’re not including the ones coming through LinkedIn or your website in your data? You might then make decisions based on the wrong data, and lose money, time, and resources on inefficient strategies as a result.

Another issue commonly met by recruiters is the delayed reporting frequency – which means you don’t have access to real-time data and have to wait until the end of a specific period to see your agency’s performance. In a market that’s changing so swiftly, you need to be able to become more agile and adapt faster than every month or quarter. This way, you can minimise the losses and be more strategic with your decisions. 

 Agencies often struggle to realise the full value of what their analytics can tell them, which means they don’t grow to their full potential. Some of the most common issues include:

 To increase your profits, become more agile, and be better prepared for market and economic shifts, you need to change your approach to data. This includes:

Module 3: Lesson 1

Knowing exactly what revenue your agency is generating, where that revenue comes from, and what actions impact this will allow you to strategise for success and make a data-driven growth plan for your agency.  These area are vital to measuring your sales performance:

• Placements made divided by client type, sector, and contract type will give you a high-level overview of the different types of placements your agency is making. It not only shows you the revenue you made in each time period but also gives you insight into which placements bring you the most revenue – and combined with current industry data, allows you to strategise for the future.
• Client contribution shows you the revenue generated by each of your individual clients. If you gauge this against the time your recruiters spend catering to that client, you can carefully shift your focus to those that bring you the most money. 
  
• Job-to-fill ratios allow you to see if you’re being efficient with the types of roles you and your recruiters are working. Tracking these by job types, sectors, and salary banding will give you an overview of the roles that are the most profitable to your agency. 
  

Being able to anticipate your agency’s upcoming sales and the revenue you can expect in the next months is vital to strategising for the future. You can segment your expected placements by the contract type and receive real-time predictions for the contract roles your agency can expect to place based on the data in your CRM and the agreed hourly rate for each role, as well as all the expected perm roles within your database.

By looking at sales forecasts and actual sales in real-time you can avoid any surprises when it comes to month end. Taking a realistic review of revenue throughout the month and quarter allows you to actually understand how your agency is performing and where focus needs to be placed. 

Market fluctuations can impact agency sales and this is particularly challenging if you only become aware of a market shift after it has happened. Without monthly insights into agency performance across your sector, you're missing key data that can guide strategic planning.  Competitive benchmarking unlocks relevant data about the wider factors that impact your agency's performance and let's you gauge your results against the market. Making use of competitive benchmarking will give you a much clearer insight into how good or bad your agency's peaks and troughs really are. After all, having an improved quarter shouldn't be viewed as a success in isolation if your improved performance is still lower than the industry average uplift.

Module 3: Lesson 3

Revenue per recruiter is the pillar of profitable growth for your agency – especially in a market where a lot of businesses are looking to maximise their profitability without having to increase their employee numbers. 

Being able to amplify the revenue you get from each of your recruiters is the key to continuous growth no matter the economic situation. You should be measuring this monthly and quarterly so you can make necessary changes in your strategy based on the results – and make sure you’re comparing the insights between different teams within your agency. 

Perhaps the most commonly forgotten, but fundamentally important factor in reporting is simplicity. The data will only ever be as good as the use it is put to, so making dashboards simple, easy to understand and easy to access in your agency is essential. To put data at the heart of your agency, your analytics needs to be seen, talked about and tracked at all levels.