Can You Help Me Answer These Recruiting Questions?

This week, I thought I’d throw out a bunch of recruiting related questions that I’m curious about. Some may be easy to answer (and I’m just to lazy to do so), some hard, and some may have to be re-stated/re-defined.

Do you have any answers?

Objective Questions

How many people get hired full time in the U.S.? How many people get hired part time, temp, or on contract in the U.S.? How many recruiters of all types are there?

How many corporate, contract, and third-party recruiters are there?

How many people get a call from any kind of recruiter in the course of a year or their career? How many people get a call from a third-party recruiter in the course of a year or their career?

What percentage of all hires come from third-party recruiters? What percentage of executives hires come from third-party recruiters?

What is the median income of corporate, contract, and third-party recruiter?

What is the median cost per hire (as recently defined) for all positions? Has it improved in the last 30 years?

What is the median time to hire for all positions? Has it improved in the last 30 years?

Subjective Questions

What are some good, easy, and cheap alternatives to resumes?

Article Continues Below

How much information about a candidate is enough? How much information about a candidate is too much?

How many people should interview a candidate? How many interviews should there be? What kind of interviews should they be? How long should an interview last?

When should you use tests and assessments to help hire? When should you not use tests and assessments to help hire?

What kinds of tasks should people in staffing do (core activities)? What kinds of tasks should people in staffing not do (non-core activities)?

How much time/what percentage of of time should people in staffing spend doing non-core activities?

What recruiting tasks can be done best/only in direct physical contact? What recruiting tasks can be done best/only remotely?

Keith Halperin is currently working as a senior contract recruiter and performs additional sourcing work. He has worked in recruiting, placement, search, and research for highly diverse clients (from startups to Fortune 500 firms) throughout the San Francisco Bay Area since 1986. He conceived, designed, and implemented corporate recruiting strategies, and developed a white paper for a $70 million, five-year NASA CS recruiting project. He developed the Recruiting Process Methodology, a comprehensive open-source roadmap of recruiting. He co-founded MyIPOJob job fairs for pre-IPO companies, and founded Recruitersforum, an online job site for all types of recruiting positions.

Topics