When asking recruiting leaders how they determine how much can one recruiter handle, the answers range from “it depends” to a set number from 10-30 to we work it out over time. The truth is that it does depend, it’s an unsexy answer, but you must look at the variables of the industry, the market, and the recruiting team’s strengths/weaknesses to answer the question with confidence.
Capacity planning is typically done weekly when roles are filled, and recruiters have the time or are treading water. Is it possible to pre-determine a reasonable number that your team should aim for taking into the fact that each role varies in difficulty?
The local talent pool has an undeniable impact on the candidate funnel, the company brand and reputation, skill level and network of the recruiting team, the hiring managers, as well as compensation and benefits to name a few.
My goal here is to propose a system in which one can assign weight to roles, while simultaneously determining how much weight one recruiter can carry.
Recruiting teams are typically active on more than one role, in more than one market at any given time.
Market supply & demand + desired skills from a specified talent market
Market = SF Bay Area, looking for technical and non-technical talent to staff midsize agriculture technology company with limited brand recognition.
* Engineering Manager is counter-intuitive. Although the skillset you are looking for is “high” (years of experience, technical + people management), there are less overall engineering management roles available (lower demand), and a relatively high quantity of tech leads, senior engineers, etc. that have the skills to fill an engineering management role. Therefore, this is potentially easier to hire than a principal level engineer. If you are looking for an Engineering Manager with experience with Agriculture, you narrow the overall pool and increase the score.
This will vary for every team depending on the time a recruiter spends on direct v. indirect tasks
Direct:
In-Direct (support tasks):
A SWOT analysis can be done at a high level overall for the company, by role, and by location if multiple offices exist.
For an example, let’s use an agriculture tech company with an office in California and Illinois. For the best results, perform one SWOT analysis for each location (where should we focus our hiring goals?) or each role (where are we most likely to make a high-quality hire in less than 40 days?).
Another possible framework to leverage: Porter’s 5 Forces (substitute supplier for talent, buyer for a company). Note the unemployment rate of a market should be taken into consideration as that does impact the bargaining power of the supplier and buyer.
For a seasoned recruiter a max weight of 20 requisitions may be appropriate, while for someone ramping up, ten would be sufficient. The maximum amount of points and how positions are weighted would be up to the team, but hopefully, this is a framework that either helps you prioritize or at a minimum explain to the company why all roles are not created equal.
