This may seem like an echo of Friday’s post here about volume, but… well, it kind of is. But, if you take a look at the world of recruiting today, it sometimes seems like “volume” is the only goal of recruiting, and that’s pretty confusing. Unless you’re trying to fill a newly-constructed factory, or complete some equally gigantic HR project, when is hiring about quantity?

Never. It’s about accurately matching quality talent with specific employment needs. Still, if you take a look at a lot of the conversation surrounding the employment world, volume (in compensation, job postings and candidate acquisition) seems like one of the most prevalent tactics for recruiting.

Part of the reason many recruiters shoot for high-volume is to raise the denominator in the Cost-per-Hire metric. In a great post on Recruitment Redefined, Doug Fuehne explains that the numerators of that ratio (i.e. the direct and indirect costs of recruiting) may seem to continually rise, but he warns that you should accurately track that number based on “what is important to your organization, and what integrates with your recruitment strategy the best.” To us that means keeping the quality placements high not through quantity but through accuracy.

That doesn’t just mean that you have to reduce the size of your network in the way some job boards have apparently done. The New York Times recently reported that some job boards have begun to charge high-dollar candidates to check out executive-level positions. According to the article, their goal is “precisely the opposite of the approach used by mass-market employment sites” and is evidently to attract the more serious (and presumably higher-quality) candidates - and, of course to generate millions in revenue.

The goal of recruiting should always be to make accurate connections between high-quality talent and an organization’s job needs. A history of quality matching (coupled with an effective network) will keep you in the recruiting game better than a throw-it-at-the-wall/see-what-sticks mentality. But we want to know what our readers think: is the most effective aim of recruiting quality or quantity? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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