Benchmarks for Recruiting Success

The Science of Sourcing

Table of Contents

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The Efficiency of Candidate Sourcing

The Science Behind Candidate Response Rates

The Impact of Lever Nurture on Sourcing Success

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Introduction

Sourcing candidates is far from easy. For many recruiters, it can be time-consuming and riddled with rejection. Still, it stands tall as one of the most efficient ways to hire - compared to applicants, it takes about half as many sourced candidates to make a hire.¹

So, how can you make the most of this game-changing recruiting method? By getting strategic and leveraging the right tools to make your job easier.

In this benchmarks report, we unpack the strategies your peers are employing to source successfully. Along the way, we answer questions like:

— How many emails does it take to earn a candidate response?

— How does your candidate response rate compare to the average?

— Which roles are most likely to respond to a cold reachout?

— How does sourcing impact time to hire?

— How does sourcing impact agency spending?

Additionally, if your sourcing success is not right where you want it to be, we have a solution that might help. Across a wide range of industries and

¹ The Little Grey Book of Recruiting Benchmarks, Lever, 2016

geographies, Lever Nurture is revolutionizing how companies source top candidates today. No longer deterred by low response rates and hundreds of manual follow-ups, teams are using automation, personalization, and metrics to see the sourcing results they want.

To write this report, we analyzed over 147,000 Nurture campaigns targeting 135,000 candidates. In the process, we discovered that teams are using Lever Nurture to nearly halve their time to hire and seriously scale back agency spend.

But first, we looked at where your sourcing success stacks up.

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Words from the wise

1 in 100 total candidates get hired

1 in 152 applicants get hired

1 in 72 sourced candidates get hired

The Efficiency of Candidate Sourcing

Our data shows that:

“The days of post and pray are gone. Today’s modern recruiting function is taking ownership of the talent pipeline, and the best way to be proactive is to attract talent through sourcing.”

Founder, Tenfold & The Talent AgencyStacy Zapar

Applicant

All Origins

Sourced

Candidates per hire by origin

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160

Number of candidates

Sourcing wins. Overall, teams need 17 percent fewer sourced candi-dates to make one hire than the aggregate of candidates from all origins - including referrals, applicants, and sourced candidates.

Furthermore, it’s worth restating that half as many sourced candidates as applicants are needed to make one hire, meaning that sourcing is twice as efficient. This proves that doubling down on your sourcing efforts will help you hire great talent faster.

Takeaway

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The Science Behind Candidate Response Rates

How many emails does it take to earn a candidate response?

“Always follow up, but keep it short. Add touchpoints that come from other people in the company. If two people have contacted the candidate, they’re more likely to feel a little rude if they don’t reply.”

Talent Lead, HipcampAmy Cherette

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%1 2 3 4

49.5%

84.7%

98.8% 99.9%

Sourcing is far more effective when you persistently follow up. This is why automating your sourcing outreach and activities is critical to driving success at scale.

With two emails rather than one, you get 71 percent more responses.

With three emails rather than one, you get 100 percent more responses.

As you can see, nearly 100 percent of candidates who eventually respond do so by the third email. Therefore, we suggest setting up 3 automated emails as a starting point for your Nurture campaign, and increasing to 4 or 5 emails if you still don’t hear back from your candidate.

Candidate Responses by Number of Emails

Perc

ent o

f Can

dida

tes

Resp

onde

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Words from the wise

Takeaway

Number of emails

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Words from the wise

Does company size impact candidate response rates?

We examined over 126,000 emails sent via Lever Nurture and saw a 41.6 percent response rate on average. While companies with over 1,000 employees did see about a 3 percent higher response rate - likely because of their stronger brand name - any other differences are relatively small. Companies across all segments see approximately the same average response rate.

Company size or brand are not the driving factors for response rate. The content of the reachout, and following up as noted in the previous section, is a significant contributor. Do your research on your candidate - through LinkedIn or social media profiles, for example - and commit to tailoring your message accordingly. Give your candidate a compelling reason to respond.

“Every time you write a recruiting email, close it with a question. When you don’t pose even a brief one, you essentially end the conversation. Emails with 1-3 questions, on the other hand, are 50 percent more likely to get a response.”

Founder and CEO of Social Talent, Social Talent Johnny Campbell

1 - 50

51 - 200

201 - 1000

1000+

Grand total

41.6%

38.6%

41.6%

44.7%

41.6%

Number of full time employees Response rate

Takeaway

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Words from the wise

Which roles are most likely to respond to a cold reachout?

No matter what roles you’re recruiting for, it’s challenging to maintain a high response rate. Still, the average does vary across different roles.

Engineers have the lowest response rate to cold outreach at 35 percent, while sales candidates have the second lowest at 41 percent.

Design candidates, on the other hand, take the lead on responsiveness at 59 percent. While some roles may be more receptive to cold outreach than others, it’s vital to keep the bar high for all of your reachouts.

To catch the attention of candidates who already hear from dozens of other recruiters, try something different such as sending as the hiring manager or even the department’s executive. Or, try reaching out to them in different online forums like Reddit, Medium, or Twitter.

“Be someone else. Send as an engineer. Send as a manager. Send as a founder. Get their permission first so they know what you’re up to. It’s their reputation you’re representing. You can do this with a couple of clicks within Lever.”

Head of Talent, MeteorChris Shaw

Design

Product Management

Marketing

Recruiting

Data & Analytics

Sales & Account Management

Engineering

Candidate Response Rate by Role

Takeaway

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%

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Words from the wise

“I needed to get innovative with a candidate who wasn’t responding. So I tweeted at her, and eventually got her on the phone. I’m a big fan of reaching out to candidates through social channels. I’ll follow conference hashtags and slack channels where people are passionate about a specific area.”

Technical Recruiter, Netflix Walta Nemariam

Lever Nurture power users

“We respond in less than 24 hours to all candidate emails and questions. We know there are a lot of companies out there; we strive to make the candidate experience with Button exceptional.”

Head of People, ButtonStephanie Mardell

Button’s average time to interview is 8 days

How long does it take to schedule an interview after sending the first cold reachout?

Time to interview - refers to the period between the first cold reachout and the day the first interview (onsite or phone) is scheduled.

The average time to interview for sourced candidates across all companies is 17 days.

Do you know what your time to interview is? If not, dig into your recruiting metrics and see where you stack up against the average. If your time to interview is higher, sending additional follow ups could warm even the most in-demand candidate to the idea of having a conversation sooner. We also recommend looking in under-tapped spaces such as Slack groups or Meetups for high quality candidates - getting creative with where you look can be your golden ticket.

Takeaway

Average 17 days

Days to interview

0d 5d 10d 15d 20d 25d 30d

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The Impact of Lever Nurture on Sourcing Success

So, what is Lever Nurture anyway?Lever Nurture is sourcing automation software that allows teams to deliver consistent, effective, and personalized communications to passive candidates at scale. Lever Nurture brings the power of proven marketing strategies and technology into recruiting. Teams use Nurture Campaigns to automate candidate outreach and follow ups, Nurture Recommendations to intelligently surface candidates from talent databases for new roles, and Nurture Reports to optimize their sourcing strategy. Lever Nurture is built

into the Lever applicant tracking system so that candidate records are always complete, which allows companies to track the impact of their sourcing strategy all the way to hire.

Next, we show the massive sourcing gains teams have seen with Lever Nurture:

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Boost in sourced hires

A sourced hire was once a passive candidate. After responding to cold outreach and progressing through interview process, they eventually elected to join the team. Companies increase their number of sourced hires by 19 percent by investing in Lever Nurture.

To actually hire the passive candidates you source, it’s important to creatively engage them over time rather than rely on one cold email. This means investing in more unique personalization, often with the help of your teammates. Using Lever Nurture, teams are able to seamlessly customize their reachouts in only a few clicks. They can also send messages for any team member, including executives, hiring managers, or peers.

Building meaningful candidate relationships also requires regular check-ins. Teams can add touchpoints to any Lever Nurture campaign, then automate follow ups so that they don’t have to worry about about losing the interest of passive candidates.

Takeaway

30%

25%

20%

15%

10%

5%

0%

Before Lever Nurture After Lever Nurture

Change in sourced hires with Lever Nurture

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Lever Nurture power users

“Lever Nurture has been a game changer. We’ve saved time automating our follow-ups instead of manually sending new emails each time, and we can adjust our campaigns based on candidate engagement. Also, our response rate has jumped from roughly 40 to 60 percent.”

Head of Talent, ThreadMelissa Trahan

“Lever Nurture helps us automate the process of building relationships with our passive candidates. Our team has noticed a significant increase in our engagement and conversion rates among sourced prospects.”

Senior Manager, Global Talent Sourcing, MedalliaCathy Taylor

Medallia increased sourced hires by 177 percent

Thread doubled sourced hires

Words from the wise

“Keep it personal: Your emails need to seem personal, even if they’re not. Avoid sending out emails that look like impersonal mass spam, by pulling in unique details about each candidate you are reaching out to.”

“I get a little crazy with email subject lines to candidates. I get dad-jokey, and I call them my laffy taffy jokes. Oftentimes, I even use song lyrics. Once, I said, ‘Hello, is it your xcode skills I’m looking for?”

Program Resource Manager, NSW

Senior Technical Sourcer, Vevo

Chris Long

Mary Ann Bailey

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Reduction in time to hire Time to hire refers to the number of days elapsed between when a candidate enters your pipeline and when they are hired.

Before investing in Lever Nurture, the average time to hire for sourced candidates was 61 days. With Lever Nurture, the average time to hire for sourced candidates is 38 days.

Companies experience a 38 percent decrease in time to hire for sourced candidates with Lever Nurture.

Lever Nurture power users

“In large part, our decrease in time to hire has been the result of intense partnerships with recruitment and hiring managers. Also, we rolled out a flexible 360° recruitment solution for all our teams - combining mature end-to-end process, modern technologies like Lever, and automated reporting.”

Project Manager of Strategic Initiatives for Talent Acquisition, VEON

Heather Luth

Veon decreased time to hire by 45 percent

Successful recruiters zero in on sourcing only candidates that are highly qualified. Through engaging candidates who are a strong fit early on, teams don’t have to spend as much time evaluating candidates later on in the process.

Also, teams can drill down into their recruiting metrics to double down on the sourcing strategies that are working and shave off hours spent on strategies that aren’t. By tracking opens, clicks and responses across all candidate touchpoints, they determine what is engaging candidates.

Takeaway

Before Lever Nurture

After Lever Nurture

Time to hire for sourced candidates

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Time to hire (days)

Words from the wise

“With industry recruiting benchmarks to measure your sourcing success against, you can hold yourself and your team accountable to better results. You can also understand what’s working well in your process and what’s not.”

Founder & CEO of Social Talent Johnny Campbell

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Decrease in agency spend

Agency hires are those who were successfully recruited by a third-party recruiting agency. Typically, the agency receives 15-30 percent of the new hire’s salary as compensation, which serves as an extra cost for the company. Also, agencies often target harder to fill positions with higher salaries like executives and engineers, which drives the cost up further.

After investing in Lever Nurture, companies decreased their agency hires on average by 31 percent.

6%

5%

4%

3%

2%

1%

0%

Before Lever Nurture After Lever Nurture

Change in Agency Hires

Takeaway

Teams often turn to agencies when - bogged down by manual tasks like emailing candidates - they have no time to strategically recruit. Lever Nurture uses the power of automation to give recruiters their time back. Rather than tracking responses and writing repetitive messages, recruit-ers can focus on finding highly qualified candidates and personalizing their outreach. As teams see more sourcing success, it’s goodbye agencies and hello money savings.

Lever customers have saved millions on agency fees. BPM, for example - a 500 person accounting firm - saved $900k and counting with Lever.

Lever Nurture power users

“Using Lever to manage pipelines, share profiles with the business, and present shortlists has increased the internal reputation of Talent Acquisition, and thus decreased the need for reliance on expensive external agencies.”

Project Manager of Strategic Initiatives for Talent Acquisition, VEON

Heather Luth

Veon decreased their agency hires by 83 percent

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There’s no denying that sourcing is a difficult craft to master. You may have to send several followups to earn a candidate response regardless of your team’s reputation, and certain roles are more likely to respond to cold messages than others.

Yet despite sourcing’s trickiness, there is a formula for success - one that’s rooted in using metrics, persistence, creativity, and automation to inform your strategy. Armed with the ‘words from the wise’ above and tools like Lever Nurture, those high response rates are yours for the taking.

We analyzed over 147,000 Lever Nurture campaigns targeting 135,000 candidates during the period from January 2017 through January 2018.

Conclusion

Methodology

Lever’s mission is to help the world hire with conviction. Our Talent Acquisition Suite draws the entire team together to efficiently source, nurture, interview, and hire top talent through effortless collaboration. Incorporating best-of-breed automation, intelligence and design, Lever helps employers develop stronger candidate relationships in fewer clicks, by combining powerful ATS and CRM functionality in one modern platform - and measure the results with confidence.

Lever was founded in 2012 and supports the hiring needs of over 1,500 leading companies around the globe including the teams at Netflix, KPMG NZ, Hot Topic, and Cirque du Soleil. With an overall gender ratio of 50:50, Lever is also fiercely committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversity and inclusion. For more information, visit https://www.lever.co.

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