If you’re wondering why recruitment goals are important, consider this: With unemployment at its lowest level in over 50 years, organizations are fiercely competing to land the best candidates to fill their vacancies. Today’s hiring teams are under intense pressure to raise the bar. This means reviewing and improving every aspect of the recruitment journey – and that’s where recruitment goals come in.
As business author Zig Ziglar said: “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to use SMART recruitment and talent acquisition goals to get the edge by setting – and achieving – your hiring targets.
Contents
What are recruitment goals?
Types of recruitment goals
Why set recruitment goals?
How to set recruitment goals in 10 steps
Recruitment goals examples
What are recruitment goals?
A recruitment goal is an objective set by HR to direct hiring teams toward achieving a specific outcome or target within a particular period of time. These goals are most effective when they are aligned with an organization’s strategic needs.
Recruitment and talent acquisition goals are important for setting the agenda and prioritizing initiatives related to improving HR’s processes for attracting, hiring, and onboarding high-quality candidates.
Types of recruitment goals
Goals for recruitment can be classified into two main categories:
1. Talent recruitment goals
Goals to improve an organization’s ability to attract, hire, and onboard high-quality talent with the right skill sets and culture fit. These goals may include specific areas such as:
- Employer branding: For example, increase positive brand perception among potential candidates.
- Candidate experience: For example, enhance the overall candidate experience during the recruitment process.
- Quality of hire: Improve the quality of hires by assessing performance and cultural fit.
- Talent acquisition: For instance, increase the efficiency of talent acquisition efforts.
- Internal mobility and development: For example, facilitate internal career growth and development opportunities.
- Digital HR: For example, leverage technology to enhance recruitment processes.
- Talent retention: For example, improve employee retention rates.
2. Operational recruitment goals
Goals to improve the HR department’s recruitment capabilities, processes, and performance. These goals may include:
- Integration with HR and business: For instance, enhance collaboration between HR and business units for better alignment.
- Speed and efficiency: For example, reduce time-to-fill and streamline the recruitment process.
- Recruitment personnel: For example, develop and empower the recruitment team with tech and digital skills.
- AI integration and automation: For example, incorporate AI and automation tools for more effective and data-driven recruitment.
- Measurement and evaluation: For instance, establish objectives and key results (OKRs) to measure and improve recruitment effectiveness.
Why set recruitment goals?
- Translate business strategy into actionable outcomes: Effective recruitment goals provide an action plan that is directly linked to broader business goals. Hiring the right talent drives innovation, productivity, and organizational growth.
- Focus on talent needs: Recruitment goals help you define the specific skills, experience, and cultural fit needed to be successful in your organization. These goals can lead to greater success in developing ideal candidate profiles and more focused recruitment efforts that attract the most suitable individuals.
- Increase efficiency and reduce costs: Well-defined goals will guide your efforts and streamline your processes. For instance, a refined search process will reduce time wasted on unsuitable candidates. This leads to faster hiring and cost savings.
- Improve the quality of your hires: By setting recruitment and talent acquisition goals for skills, experience, diversity, and other important qualities, you can more purposefully shape the composition of your workforce for greater success.
- Drive innovation in your recruitment: When you set challenging goals, you’re naturally encouraging your team to explore fresh solutions and ways of thinking, such as sourcing new channels, leveraging recruitment technology, and refining your outreach strategies. The outcome? A more competitive and effective recruitment process.
- Enjoy steady progress: Consistent goal setting and measurement of outcomes provide you with benchmarks to track progress, assess the effectiveness of your recruitment strategies, and tackle areas for improvement.
- Boost performance: When everyone involved in recruitment has a clear target and understands their shared objectives, it fosters accountability and encourages them to perform at their best.
How to set recruitment goals in 10 steps
Step 1: Understand your organization’s needs
Align with your business strategy. Analyze your company’s overall strategy and growth plans for the year. Will you launch more products, focus on new initiatives, establish new channels, or open additional branches? What skills and expertise are needed to achieve these goals in the upcoming 12 months?
Assess departmental needs. For your recruitment goals to be effective, they must be inclusive. Consult with hiring managers across all departments to understand their particular current and future staffing requirements, skills gaps, and projected workloads.
Step 2: Review your past performance
Review the past year’s goals for recruitment. Did you achieve what you set out to in the previous year? Pinpoint the areas where recruiting strategies fell short of expectations (for instance, high turnover rates or long hiring delays) and flag those areas for improvement in the new year.
Use metrics to evaluate your past performance. Remove subjectivity and rely on data instead. Track last year’s performance using HR performance indicators such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, source of hires, and new hire retention rate.
Review your recruitment processes. Are your current recruitment processes as effective as they can be? Analyze the efficacy of existing sourcing channels, interviewing practices, and onboarding procedures.
Step 3: Define the most important KPIs for the new year
Review your recruiting metrics. Which KPIs did you focus on in the previous year? Are they still relevant? If not, adjust your KPIs for the year ahead. Here’s a list of important recruiting metrics to consider:
- KPIs of quality of hires: This set of KPIs will help you assess whether your recruitment goals are translating into valuable outcomes. Include KPI metrics such as new hire performance, first-year retention rate, and promotion rates to gauge the quality of talent acquired.
- KPIs for recruitment efficiency: Are all your HR processes optimized? Put them to the test by including KPIs to measure recruitment process efficiency in your recruitment goals. These may include time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and application-to-interview conversion rates.
- KPIs for employer branding: Is your organization gaining or losing traction in the talent war? Assess the reach and engagement of your employer branding efforts by tracking social media metrics, website traffic, and candidate feedback.
Step 4: Ensure your recruitment goals are relevant
Consider talent market factors. If you want to remain relevant, it’s essential to adapt to shifting currents shaping today’s world of talent and HR. Research industry trends, competitor practices, and emerging technologies to identify the types of talent needed for future success.
Don’t overlook emerging HR trends. Disruptions to ‘business as usual’ over the last few years continue to impact HR. Pay attention to emerging HR trends such as a renewed focus on finding ways to combat productivity stagnation, extending your talent pool with ‘hidden workforce’ candidates such as retirees, caregivers, and individuals without degrees, and the upskilling of HR personnel in business acumen.
Step 5: Factor in budget and resources
Align recruitment goals with budget. Ensure your recruitment and talent acquisition goals are achievable within your budget. Factor in all costs associated with sourcing platforms, advertising, interviewing processes, and relocation needs.
Optimize resource allocation. Is your hiring department under or over-resourced? Review the efficiency of your existing recruitment resources. Can you streamline processes, leverage technology, or consider outsourcing to maximize output within your budget constraints?
Step 6: Set SMART recruitment goals
Avoid the trap of setting vague goals that fail to materialize into meaningful outcomes. Instead, use the SMART goal-setting framework to define your aspirations and convert them into specific, measurable achievements.
- S – Be specific: he first step is clearly defining and articulating what you want to achieve. For example: ‘Reduce time-to-hire.’
- M – Make it measurable: It can’t be managed if it can’t be measured. Include quantifiable metrics to track progress towards your goals. For example: ‘Reduce time-to-hire by 20%’.
- A – Make it attainable: Set ambitious but realistic goals to stretch your team and encourage them to aim higher. In our example, a 50% improvement may seem impossible. However, a 20% improvement could be attainable given the right effort.
- R – Be relevant: Match your recruitment goals with your organization’s overall strategy and needs. In our example, are there specific departments that need your focus?
- T – Make them time-based: Goals without deadlines often fail to materialize. Define a specific timeframe for achieving each of your goals to create clarity and urgency.
So, what does a SMART recruitment goal look like? Let’s revisit our example:
- Vague goal: Reduce time-to-hire in 2024.
- SMART goal: Reduce time-to-hire in the Finance, Operations, and Sales divisions by a minimum of 20% (from an average of 12 weeks to 9,6 weeks) by 31 August 2024.
Step 7: Get buy-in
Involve key stakeholders. Don’t create your HR recruitment goals in isolation. Get hiring managers, senior management, and HR teams to participate in goal-setting to get alignment and commitment.
Step 8: Communicate goals effectively
Communicate your recruitment goals. Don’t leave anyone out of the loop. Include a communication plan to reach all relevant team members and stakeholders so that everyone understands your recruitment goals and their role in achieving these.
Establish feedback loops. Make sure communication runs both ways. Be proactive about gathering feedback from hiring managers, candidates, and recruiters to identify areas for improvement in your recruitment processes.
Step 9: Plan for continuous improvement
Conduct periodic reviews. Effective recruitment goal-setting is not a one-time event that only occurs in January. Regularly monitor whether you’re on track to achieve your goals throughout the year. Schedule quarterly assessments of your recruitment goals, KPIs, and overall strategy and adapt to changing market and organizational conditions as needed.
Step 10: Celebrate successes
Recognize and reward. Remember, it’s important to celebrate your wins, whether large or small. Cheer on your team members for achieving recruitment goals to ensure you maintain high motivation and engagement levels.
Recruitment goals examples
Need a few thought-starters to get your goal-setting going? Here’s a comprehensive list of examples of recruitment and talent acquisition goals:
Talent recruitment goals
Employer branding goals
- Enhance your company’s image as an attractive employer by communicating your company’s purpose, mission, and culture to attract candidates who share your values and vision
- Communicate your organization’s commitment to pay transparency, climate adaptation, and sustainability policies in job adverts to present your company as a responsible corporate citizen
- Develop compelling narratives through reviews, videos, and write-ups that showcase your company culture, values, and employee experience
- Actively engage on social media and participate in industry events to elevate your organization as an employer of choice by sharing employee testimonials to attract top talent
- Capture attention and attract talent by running engaging social media ads and using sponsored content to showcase company culture and career opportunities.
Candidate experience goals
- Create a positive candidate experience at every touchpoint to encourage referrals and repeat applications
- Survey all candidates (successful and unsuccessful) on the highs and lows of their experience of your hiring process
- Personalize your job postings by tailoring job descriptions to specific roles and highlighting unique company benefits to generate targeted interest
- Simplify online applications by eliminating unnecessary steps and offer one-click application options through social media or mobile platforms for improved experience and higher conversion rates
- Respond promptly to all inquiries and keep your candidates informed throughout the process to build a positive employer image.
Talent acquisition goals
- Align talent acquisition with long-term business goals by identifying critical skills and competencies needed for future growth and success
- Build a diverse pool of potential candidates for anticipated and unforeseen needs
- Source new targeted and niche recruitment channels to identify hard-to-find talent within specialized fields or industries
- Leverage AI and technology to identify high-potential candidates.
Digital HR goals
- Increase your social media visibility by growing your follower count on relevant platforms through sharing engaging company culture content, employee testimonials, and job openings
- Optimize job postings for mobile devices
- Develop a mobile-friendly application and tracking progress
- Target specialized job boards and platforms catering to your industry or desired candidate demographics to reach niched talent pools
- Create short, impactful video testimonials featuring employees who are thriving in their roles and share what they appreciate about your company culture to attract potential candidates.
Talent retention goals
- Enhance your efforts to create a positive and engaging work environment
- Reduce employee turnover and minimize talent loss
- Assess your total compensation packages to ensure they are market-competitive and valued by your staff
- Increase merit-based pay incentives to motivate performance and boost engagement
- Invest in meaningful employee development and career growth opportunities
- Conduct regular employee surveys and initiate two-way communication to pinpoint and resolve issues constructively
- Promote work-life fit to reignite employee engagement and reduce burnout.
Operational recruitment goals
Integration with HR and business goals
- Align recruitment goals with overall HR and business objectives
- Consult across all business functions and collaborate effectively with business leaders to ensure alignment
- Link performance and outcomes to salary, incentives, and bonuses
- Regularly communicate recruitment goals and progress to stakeholders across the organization.
AI-integration and automation goals
- Leverage technology to automate repetitive tasks like screening resumes, scheduling interviews, communicating with candidates, and generating offers
- Use AI to personalize the candidate experience by tailoring communication, providing relevant job recommendations, and offering information specific to their skills and interests
- Leverage AI to remove human bias by evaluating candidate skills through online assessments
- Use AI algorithms to reduce new hire failure rates by identifying top candidates and predicting their success based on compatibility with the company culture, team dynamics, and job requirements.
Measurement and evaluation goals
- Ensure all goals are articulated as SMART recruitment goals with clear metrics to track progress and success
- Develop data-driven capabilities to help analyze data, identify improvement areas, and adjust strategies.
To sum up
Recruitment goals aren’t a ‘set it and forget it’ event. If you want to see your goals materialize, follow-through is essential. Be proactive and consistent in monitoring progress and make adjustments where necessary throughout the year.
Catherine is the Manager, Editorial Content & Strategy at AIHR. She manages the content for AIHR’s blogs. Catherine aspires to provide content that is relevant, insightful, and unique to the HR audience.
