How to use your recruiting budget efficiently

Diana Stegall

October 18, 2020 18:45

Available for	User roles	Admins, Super Admins
Available for	Packages	Select Lever packages

With this guide, you can: get maximum ROI on your recruiting dollars by doubling down on sources which lead to hires - and eliminating sources which waste your time!

Asking "Which sources drive the most candidates into my pipeline?" often leads to overstuffed pipelines and extra busywork. Are you wasting time sifting through lots of underqualified applicants? Are you paying money to advertise your open roles online - without any idea of whether they're delivering results?

Instead, we recommend focusing on this question: "Which sources drive the best candidates into my pipeline?"

The Key Metric: Conversion rate by source

Lever's Conversion Rate report lets you zero in on your highest value candidate sources. Instead of focusing on volume, zero in on what matters most: did this source result in a hire?

Navigate to Conversion rates > by source to compare your sources side by side. Click on the column headers to sort by different criteria:

Sort by Hired to see the sources yielding the greatest number of new hires.

Sort by Offers to see how many high-quality candidates from each source received offers. If you see a large difference between the number of offers extended and the number of hires made, keep in mind that candidates from this source may require extra woo-ing to seal the deal.

Sort by Percent Hired to see your most efficient sources of hire - these delivered a high ratio of qualified candidates, ultimately leading to a hire. Great investment!

Sort by All Moved to see the sources filling your pipeline with the greatest quantity of candidates. If you see a source with a high number of moved candidates but a low number of hires, consider eliminating that source altogether, or making it more difficult for poorly qualified candidates to apply. These sources are costing your team time and possibly money without delivering value.

TIP: Seeing a lot of candidates with a source called "Added Manually"? That's a sign your team might be entering candidate data by hand, or manually uploading lots of resumes. Consider using Lever's Chrome extension or email forwarding to save time and generate more useful data.

Using Lever to hire efficiently

Capture specific candidate sources - automatically

Lever makes it easy to identify exactly where your candidates come from! Remember, an origin is a broad, high-level description of how a candidate entered your pipeline - were they sourced by a recruiter on your team? did they apply for a job? were they a referral from an employee or an agency? A source is a granular, specific description of where a candidate came from before entering your pipeline. Here are a few examples:

Situation	Origin	Source
A recruiter finds an interesting profile on LinkedIn	Sourced	LinkedIn
An employee refers a former co-worker for a role	Referred	Jane Smith
A candidate fills out an application at a job fair	Applied	HR Tech Conference 2019

How can you make sure Lever tracks your sources automatically, efficiently, and specifically?

1. Use Lever's Chrome extension to source candidates.

Lever's Chrome extension automatically captures a candidate's source and origin across a wide variety of websites, including LinkedIn, AngelList, and more. Install the extension and start sourcing candidates effortlessly.

2. Create custom URLs to track ultra-specific sources like job fairs, message boards, industry events, and more.

Sharing your open roles on Facebook? Reaching out to a niche industry group or an email list? Recruiting at a job fair or a conference? Create a unique link to capture these specific sources in Lever automatically. When someone clicks the link and submits an application, they'll automatically enter your Lever account with your specific source tag.

TIP: Customers often create custom URLs when attending events like job fairs or conferences. Consider bringing an iPad to the event, open to your custom URL, for candidates to fill out at your booth. Afterwards, it's easy to identify candidates with a "XXX Job Fair 2019" source tag and track whether your appearance at the job fair resulted in future hires.

3. Use Lever's new agency portal to distinguish high-value partners from those delivering duds.

Using Lever's new agency portal features, it's easier than ever for outside recruiting agencies to submit candidates. Our agency portal will automatically tag candidates with the correct origin and source, so you can see at a glance whether your agencies are delivering high-value candidates.

Keep an eye on the big picture

Don't forget to take a step back and look at overall trends across your recruiting efforts via Conversion Rates > by origin. In general, is it more efficient for your team to allocate your recruiting budget to driving more prospects to fill out applicants - or is it time to invest more heavily in proactive sourcing? Would it be valuable to drive an internal referral campaign? Are you relying more heavily on recruiting agencies to fill your open roles vs. last year? Whether you're making large scale budget decisions or just looking to trim some expenses, Lever's Conversion Rates reports will make sure you're always focusing on quality - instead of quantity.

What's next?

Once you've designed incredible job descriptions and qualified candidates are pouring into your pipeline, make sure you can interview them all without getting overwhelmed! Check out our guide to building an interview process that scales, so you can deliver a great candidate experience while saving your team time and money.