Challenges
1. Unreliable LinkedIn data
Unreliable data made it difficult to track success on LinkedIn. VP of Talent and Culture Trent Cotton explains, "Data integrity is important to me, and I don't trust LinkedIn's data. For example, we were doing a contract review, and a person once told me they influenced 165 hires on LinkedIn. That was 100 more hires than we made."
2. Role backlog
When Trent took over his team, there was a backlog of 40 roles with an average time-to-hire of 60 days. There were a few factors that contributed to this backlog. The first was an inefficiency in the search process. Trent explains, "Most of the time, the team ran the searches through LinkedIn." Since his team didn't build pipelines for recurring roles, a recruiter would start a new search each time looking for talent.
Other factors included a lack of documentation and standardization of the recruiting process. Those were all areas Trent was looking to fix.
3. Increasing LinkedIn costs
On top of issues with LinkedIn data integrity and performance, rising costs became hard to ignore.
"LinkedIn increased our price by 34%. At that price, you would think their search ability would be top-notch. To me, there was no real value there."
Solutions
1. Building data-driven solutions with Talent and Market Insights
With a priority on data-driven recruiting, Trent's team began using EZ Insights to build their recruiting strategies by understanding the talent market. Trent explained, "Every intake call starts with me sharing my screen and running through Insights. It allows me to show the talent market, including skills and pay scales. When super specific qualifications or requests come in, I can return to my team and amend expectations when a strategy clearly won't work based on the market."
2. Sourcing and engagement with hireEZ's recruitment CRM
With a recruiting strategy set from Insights, Trent's team then starts sourcing and outreach in hireEZ. He explained, "I've always used hireEZ as a recruitment CRM, and that was one of the things I fell in love with."
Once Trent established standards for his team's recruiting process, his team filled 93% of the 40-role backlog in just two months. As a result, his time to fill decreased by 65% from 60 to 21 days total.
Trent added that by leveraging hireEZ's email sequence campaigns, "my team's engagement metrics and response time from candidates were much better on hireEZ than on LinkedIn."
3. Reliable recruiting data
hireEZ provided reliable reporting capabilities that helped Trent spotlight success and improve recruiting performance.
Trent explained, "I like being able to look at my team on hireEZ and see who was getting higher response rates, who was using the platform, how they were using it, and if it affected their hire rate. With LinkedIn, you can't really do that or get that information. We'd then use hireEZ data to sell the platform to other recruiters saying, 'You can make hires from other places than LinkedIn.'"
True to his word, Trent showed how hireEZ helped him hire faster than LinkedIn. Trent explained, "I had a recruiter reluctant to use hireEZ and asked him, 'How's LinkedIn working for you? You haven't filled a job in 4 weeks.' I took two of his jobs, used hireEZ, and filled them in two weeks."
Results
- Reduced time-to-hire by 40%
- Filled 93% of 40-role backlog in two months
- Reduced LinkedIn Recruiter spend by 61%
Learn more by reading the full case study.
Trent and the HatchWorks recruiting team truly inspire us. Their dedication to excellence is second to none, and they ensure we are accountable for helping them perform at their best. We cannot wait to see our partnership grow stronger as the years go on.
