Dear Recruiter...

First off, I want to say it was awesome to see so many of you at IHR Bristol the other week. It’s always super interesting to get outside the London bubble.

The quality of the conversations and the engagement from everyone in Bristol was off the charts. And you were all so friendly and polite—you give northerners a run for their money!

A big thank you again to everyone who came to my talk on hiring manager engagement. A reminder that RecruitmentTrends is free and accessible for anyone wanting to benchmark their performance against their peers.

📈 Data Point: Applications per hire

Data and insights direct from the Pinpoint team

Speaking of RecruitmentTrends, this week, we took a look at average applications per hire across all sources for H1 24. Compared to the second half of last year, the average number of applications has seen a decent uptick. Time-to-fill fell by 17% in the same period.

This should be good news, given that January's SHRM 2024 Talent Trends Report called out low applicant volume as the top reason organizations were experiencing recruitment challenges.

But today, AI bots and application deluge have TA spooked. Recruiters fear volume.

Perhaps all this tells us that today’s biggest challenges are actually process efficiency, effective use of tools, and average hires per recruiter. 

You can control two of these factors. So why not face your fear of volume and turn it to your advantage?

🎙️ From Data to Strategy

Our webinar with The Talent Community

Back in September, I joined Harriet Ball , Head of Talent, SuperSeed VC, and Philip Smith , Client Services Director, Instant Impact, for a webinar focused on the foundations of good reporting, challenges you face without data, and delivering strategic insights.

Harriet gave a great example of using data to engage hiring managers (a topic I’ve been giving a lot of airtime lately).

Ever had a hiring manager who, despite seeing four good people already, keeps wanting to see CVs? While at the same time, you know from data you've gathered from previous roles that:

• You get the best CVs within the first couple of weeks of the role being open.
• One of those CVs is more often than not hired. 

Well, as Harriet says, “Knowing you have that data to back you up can put you in a really strong position to better service the business, which will ultimately improve your relationship with the business and improve the overall view of TA within the organization to become more strategic.”

Watch the whole recording on YouTube here.

📍 The Pinboard

What's new in recruitment?

• 🎙️ In the last Dear Recruiter, the data point zeroed in on sourced candidates. By chance, last week’s Tea Time with Talent Acquisition podcast was all about strategic sourcing with Senior Sourcing, Talent Intelligence & Research Partner, João Louza Brito.
• 📚  Join Talent also released a guide all about building a strategic sourcing function, and how to avoid the 5 most common mistakes.
• 📆 And PURPL are hosting a webinar at 15:00 GMT on December 3, all about how to improve your sourcing. Featuring our own Mike Bradshaw , the aim is to make it “the most practical 60 minutes possible”.
• 💡This recent article from HRDrive explores Gallup research, revealing the importance if interview quality in a candidate’s decision whether to accept an offer. More evidence hammering home that hiring is selling, not buying.
• 📚 Finally, CV-Library has a new report on the race for talent that pitches the public sector against private.

💜 Purpl Unlocked

From Purpl and featuring a course from Pinpoint’s VP of Talent, Mike

PURPL has launched a free Recruiter Training program for anyone Open to Work. The talent market is tough right now, and Purpl Unlocked is about helping TA professionals stay sharp while searching for new opportunities.

I love this from Joe and the team. It’s super valuable and will help you bring concrete value and insights to your next role.

Sign up, and you’ll get access to nine free courses, including Mike Bradshaw 's course on building candidate-centric processes.

Finally, a slice of data you can source quickly and use right away to have a big impact on your TA team: energy audits.

I talked about this in my chat with Felix Mitchell. It’s simple. Print off last week’s calendars (retro, I know) and get a green, red, and orange pen. Then use:

🟢 Green to mark stuff you did that gave you energy and you felt you did a great job with

🔴 Red for what you absolutely despised doing

🟠 And orange for stuff you’re ambivalent about but didn’t love 

It's actually fascinating when you put that out as a team and see where there's overlap. And often, there are very easy pockets where Tom hates this, Pete loves that, let's just swap.

There’s this common feeling that if you’re working hard, it should feel hard. Rubbish. This exercise is so easy and helps overcome any feelings of guilt about giving more time to the green.

As always, for any insights or feedback, you can email me at  dear.recruiter@pinpointhq.com

All the best,

Tom Hacquoil

Pinpoint CEO