How Many Recruiters Does Your Company Truly Need To Ace Hiring

How Many Recruiters Do I Need?

Regarding talent acquisition, the recruitment department is crucial for identifying, attracting, and selecting top applicants.

 In this post, we’ll look at the recruitment team in more detail, including its optimal size and the ideal number of recruiters your company needs to ace hiring.

But before diving into that, you must know that the need to scale up the team size of the recruiters dramatically depends on the workload and requisitions they receive from time to time.

Factors to Consider

While there are so many factors that the list can be never-ending, the following are the primary criteria to consider while calculating recruiter workload, according to Sackett: 

• The time and effort required to recruit for the requisite roles. “Applicant flow per opportunity, the quantity of outside sourcing required to discover the proper applicants, and the level of screening and interviewing required to fill the position all play a role,” he explained.
• The amount of experience and knowledge of the recruiter in the labor market.
• The resources available to the recruiter to complete the task. Internal employee recommendation programs, robust social media recruiting, and various technological systems can help recruiters operate more efficiently and handle more requisitions.

Your company’s size and the number of prospects you contact can influence the target number of recruiters you hire. 

According to Talent Growth Advisers , the key to success is keeping a careful balance between recruiters and requisitions, which can be a fluid condition.

When you have too many requisitions to handle and don’t have enough recruiters, all those received requests are left unattended. However, too many recruiters can lead to inefficiencies such as duplicate applications, bad matches, and prospects getting “lost in the crowd.”

The following factors impact the number of recruiters needed as far as the company size is concerned.

Need for Recruiter Differ Across Company Sizes

For Startups and Small Businesses (Up to Ten Openings per Year)

A dedicated HR employee is much alone a recruiter in small organizations. Recruitment in such companies may be handled by an employee interested in HR and recruitment. Still, most of the time, the company’s (founder and) CEO will be actively involved in the hiring process.

If the organization isn’t discovering and recruiting great talent independently, the most cost-effective solution is to hire a freelance recruiter or an agency.

Vacancies in Medium-Sized Businesses Range From 10 to 20 per Year

In terms of recruitment, there are numerous possibilities for this type of firm.

If the organization has previously hired an HR generalist, this person is most often responsible for leading a recruiting team  of one or two members. As a result, they’ll mainly be involved in every process, from sourcing and screening to making an offer and negotiating a salary.

If the company does not yet have an HR generalist or if this person is too busy with other HR responsibilities, a part-time or freelance recruiter can be engaged or use recruitment process outsourcing.

Vacancies at Scale-UPS and Fast-Growing Enterprises Range From 20 to 80 Every Year

Once you’ve reached this point, you’ll require a full-time recruiter. Depending on the actual number of vacancies and the scarcity of your target demographic, this can still be a part-time or full-time position.

There are several ways to locate candidates and draft job descriptions for a job board.

Suppose your HR generalist and recruiter are overburdened or lack the necessary expertise to handle certain aspects of the recruitment process. You can either employ specialized external freelancers or agencies to help or do it yourself.

Vacancies at Larger Businesses Range From 80 to 1,000 Every Year

The desire for a serious recruitment team is vital at this stage.

You’ll need numerous recruiters, as well as a team lead or recruiting manager to lead the team, offer management information, engage active job seekers, target passive candidates effectively, coordinate the use of recruitment tools , and conduct some data analysis, depending on the actual number of vacancies and the scarcity of your target group. 

You already have at least 10,000+ candidates with 500 positions assuming at least 20 candidates per vacancy. This opens up many doors for actionable data analysis by the recruitment teams using recruitment tools.

How to Determine the Number Of Recruiters You Need on Your Team

The following steps can determine the number of recruiters you need in your recruitment team.

Step 1. Determine How Much Recruiting Capacity You’ll Need to Satisfy Your Company’s Growth Objectives

To decide if your recruiting staff can reach your company’s hiring goals, look at their previous performance and present bandwidth, and see if those indicators are adequate for the hiring speed necessary. 

You’ll need to figure out how much extra capacity you’ll need to close the gap.

If your organization plans to hire 100 individuals next year but only has two recruiters, you’ll need to figure out whether that’s possible. So, the big question is, how many overall recruiters does it need to hire 100 people in a year?

One technique to answer this equation is calculating how many people one recruiter can bring in at any given time. 

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), statistics across the country vary between 30 and 40 open requisitions per recruiter at any given time. On the other hand, recruiters specializing in high-level positions  may be able to fill three or four roles every month, while high-volume recruiters can handle 80-100 jobs at a time.

On the other hand, finding a number specific to your organization will depend on your industry, team size, geographic area, sector, profit status, critical role, and other factors.

It would be best to look at internal indicators on recruiter workload and performance from the past. Gather monthly averages and compare them to the following:

• The interview-to-hire ratio refers to the number of applicants hiring managers interview for each job ad
• Time-to-fill rates refer to how much time and effort it takes to recruit for the roles your company needs
• The percentage of candidates who accepted your employment offer is known as offer acceptance rates. This can be easily tracked through the data gathered on your applicant tracking system.
• The value a recruit brings to your firm is measured by the quality of the hire
• Turnover/retention rates are the percentages of employees who stay or depart a company over a given period
• How many hard-to-fill positions has the recruitment team been able to close?

Gathering and comparing relevant data might assist you in determining how the performance of each recruiter affects your bottom line. You can then define specific objectives and identify strategies to improve recruitment.

There are a few more elements to consider when determining how much bandwidth you’ll need to accomplish your recruitment goals, including:

• The amount of expertise and knowledge of each recruiter
• The resources you provide recruiters with to help them accomplish their jobs like initiating an employee referral program or indulging in social media recruiting
• The kinds of candidates you’re looking for
• The nature of the job/position in question
•  Communicate with the hiring manager to source candidates and discuss your expectations regarding a recruiter’s duties

Step 2. Projection of Future Results

You can calculate a theoretical capacity or bandwidth for the future based on your recruiters’ prior performance. Assume you discovered that your recruiting team of ten hired and onboarded 250 workers on average last year. As a result, each recruiter can employ approximately 25 individuals per year.

Let’s say you wanted to hire 500 new staff in the coming year. This implies that you’ll need roughly 20 recruiters to reach your target. You may then figure out how many recruiters you’ll need to add to your team or recruitment motion for next year’s hiring plan to keep recruiter burnout at bay.

Step 3. Make a Plan to Expand Your Company’s Hiring Capacity

Using the same scenario as before, if you discover that you need to hire more people to accomplish your company’s goals, you’ll need to figure out how to do it. You can either employ your resources or outsource your recruiting requirements.

Among the things you could do to make better use of your current resources are:

• Current employees are promoted to recruiting positions.
• Better administrative support (e.g., appointing recruiting coordinators and/or sources to assist recruiters)
• Using technology and automation  to make the recruitment and hiring process more efficient
• Providing explicit guidance on what to look for and specific questions to ask candidates to help recruiters arrange the interviewing process.
• Using third-party platforms and resources to discover candidates is a great idea.

If using your present resources to employ more applicants isn’t an option, you might want to explore using a recruiting firm. They are well-versed in optimal recruiting procedures  and may be able to introduce even additional sourcing strategies to identify qualified individuals.

If you have a specific function to fill in a short amount of time or if skillsets are hard to come by in your local market, you might want to explore partnering with an agency.

Having a diverse talent acquisition team, with everyone from tech-savvy coworkers to industry experts is beneficial. This will result in a mash-up of concepts and task delineation that captures the heart of what your firm is all about. Your hiring process will be more efficient, and the quality of your new workers will significantly improve. 

Despite the crucial role of recruitment teams in talent acquisition, the optimal size and structure of these teams often elude many organizations. As highlighted in this article, several factors influence the number of recruiters a company needs, such as workload, requisite roles, recruiters’ experience and knowledge, and available resources. The size of the company and the number of prospects contacted also significantly affect the recruitment process.

However, these parameters are not static; they ebb and flow with time, requiring organizations to balance the number of recruiters and requisitions carefully. Carefully understanding these dynamics can help organizations optimize their recruitment processes, ultimately enhancing business performance.

We observe a gradient of requirements when discussing the need for recruiters across different company sizes. Startups and small businesses often rely on existing HR personnel or CEOs for recruitment. As the business size grows, so does the need for dedicated recruiters or even a recruitment team.

Determining the number of recruiters required in a team isn’t an exact science. It requires assessing your company’s growth objectives, understanding the recruitment capacity needed to achieve them, and projecting future recruitment needs based on historical data. Afterward, you must devise a plan to expand your company’s hiring capacity.

There are several ways to achieve this. You could promote current employees to recruiting positions, use technology and automation to make the recruitment and hiring process more efficient, or even partner with a recruitment firm. Ultimately, the goal is to create a diverse talent acquisition team to meet your company’s recruitment needs effectively.

In conclusion, the number of recruiters needed in a company isn’t static but a dynamic figure that evolves with a company’s growth and changing needs. By understanding these dynamics and adapting accordingly, companies can optimize their recruitment processes, resulting in more effective talent acquisition and improved business performance.

Flex your Recruiters with Hiring Demand

To know more about how you can effectively leverage a recruitment team model like this to strengthen your employer brand and save yourself the hassle of trying to staff your in-house team, contact us at Recruiter.com. We will assist you in determining the optimal solution for your company.