New Look, New Metrics, and a Big Finale 🚀
The Holistic Recruiter Club #029
👋 Hey everyone!
It’s been a week of building, rebranding, and (surprisingly) coding, which means a lot of coffee and little sleep, a few “why isn’t this working?” moments a few more than few actually ha ha and a whole new look for the Holistic Recruiter Club.
Oh and it was my birthday yesterday nothing says ‘happy birthday to me’ like writing about hiring metrics, right?
Since it’s my birthday, I’m asking for one thing, drop a comment below and tell me the most ridiculous hiring metric you’ve ever been forced to track.
Best (or worst) answer wins… well, my respect and maybe a virtual slice of cake.” 🎂
📈 It feels like just a few weeks ago we hit 100 subscribers—now we’re just 1 away from 150, in fact update that, we have reached 154 woohoo!
A huge thank you to everyone who has joined along the way, especially those of you who have been here since January 2024, I know who you are, and so do you. 😉
Your support, comments, and shares are what keep this growing.
Let’s keep the momentum going!
🎨 The Rebrand is New Look but Same No-BS Insights
I’ve given Holistic Recruiter Club a fresh coat of paint with new colors, a new logo, and a sharper visual identity. I did this to make everything more clean, bold, and distinctly “me.”
💬 What do you think? Love it? Hate it? Do you wish I kept the old look?
Vote below! 👇
(If you have thoughts, hit reply and tell me, I’m genuinely curious! I got absolutely crucified for my “design skills” by the French on LinkedIn for the Charity event we did Merci
😂)Turning Research Into Actions: Final part in the 7 Part Series of The Most Effective Hiring Process. Part 7/7
Over the past few weeks, we’ve covered:
📌 Part 1: The history of hiring and selection
📌 Part 2: What actually predicts job performance (spoiler alert! Structured interviews and job-specific assessments win).
📌 Part 3: How to design a hiring process that balances efficiency, fairness, and candidate experience.
📌 Part 4: Metrics That Actually Matter
📌 Part 5: Optimising the Length of the Process
📌 Part 6: Why Every Role Needs a Different Hiring Process
So here it is Part 7/7 “The Ultimate Hiring System”
Over the last week we went on quite a journey and I even leanrt loads myself challlenge my own views on things. I love digging into these topics! Thanks for coming along on the ride and reading, it’s what motivtaes me to write each week and put the work in.
For the final in the series I thought I’d break this into three main areas as a kind of final summary:
1. Set Up a Data-Driven Hiring Playbook
Define success BEFORE you start hiring.
• What does a “great hire” actually look like? (Not just a job description, but measurable outcomes.)
• Align with hiring managers, so there is no more “I’ll know it when I see it” from them.
Build a scoring system for interviews & assessments
• Structured questions → Consistent scoring → Better hiring decisions
• Bonus tip: Calibrate hiring managers—everyone should score candidates the same way. I hate when people write that in the perfect world so here is an example for you. If you have five interviewers assessing the same candidate, but one consistently scores lower or higher than the rest, that’s a red flag.
If you do a “calibration session”, you would get interviewers review and discuss sample candidate responses together and that will ensures everyone continues to be aligned on what “good” looks like.
Start By Track only the hiring metrics that matter
As we spoke about before i recommend these first
• 👑 Time to Impact → How fast does a new hire become productive?
• 👑 Hiring Velocity → Where are the bottlenecks?
• 👑 Offer Acceptance Rate → Are you competitive in the market?
• 👑 Candidate NPS → What’s the experience like for candidates?
2. How to Hire Faster Without Sacrificing Quality
Limit interviews to 3-4 rounds MAX
• Anything beyond that = hiring purgatory.
• Train hiring managers to make decisions faster, not just safer.
💂 Use data to improve over time
• Are top performers coming from a specific hiring source? Double down.
• Is a specific manager dragging out the process? Fix it.
• Are candidates ghosting you after final rounds? Find out why.
💂 Candidate experience is competitive advantage and a matter of pride in your work.
• Clear timelines. Faster feedback. Less ghosting. ( who doesn’t want that)
• Treat hiring like sales - your candidates are customers.
3. Measuring & Improving Over Time
🧪 Run a Hiring Post-Mortem Every Quarter
• What worked? What didn’t?
• What roles took too long? Why?
• What hires turned out great? What can we learn?
🧪 Recruitment ≠ Admin. It’s a Business Function.
• Great hiring drives business success. If leadership doesn’t see that, they’re tracking the wrong numbers.
• Show the real impact of great hiring: Retention, team performance, revenue growth.
My Final Ask: Help Keep This Going
This series started with a simple goal: Make hiring better with actual evidence.
Nothing of this is pie in the sky bullshit, its real actionable and practical ways to do the job of TA well.
If this newsletter helped you rethink your approach, share it with one person who needs to see it.
More great hiring = fewer bad hiring decisions = a better industry for all of us.
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it!
What’s Next I Hear You Asking…
”Data Storytelling for TA Leaders”
Next week, I’m kicking off a brand-new series on storytelling with data.
I am thinking about How to turn hiring data into a story that drives real decisions.
What is the psychology behind why stories influence more than stats.
And how to make exec teams and managers actually care about your hiring reports.
If you’re drowning in dashboards but struggling to make your data impactful, this is for you.
💡 Question for you:
👉 What’s the hardest part about getting leadership to listen to hiring data?
Reply and let me know, I’ll tackle the biggest challenges in the first post next week!
Recruitment Metrics Bible: It’s Happening
If you’ve been following my content, you know hiring metrics are broken, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed.
and I are putting together a Recruitment Metrics Bible, breaking down:✅ A comprehensive list of all the metrics people are measuring.
✅ A definition of them ONCE AND FOR ALL
✅ How to track, improve, and use them!
We are currently getting feedback on V1 and will update it soon
Think of it as the only hiring metrics guide you’ll ever need.
Want early access? Hit reply and say “I want the Metrics Bible!”
Thanks to two the subscribers,
Click on the button below and leave a message to get access when it’s ready
🤣 Funny of the Week: Recruitment Edition
Have you ever had a weird interview? Well, it turrns out, people have been making weird hiring decisions for centuries.
📜 In the 1800s, the British Army recruited based on chest size.
• They believed a bigger chest = a stronger soldier.
• So, men would inflate their lungs as much as possible during measurement.
• Some even drank large amounts of water before the test to expand their torso.
• Because obviously, a bigger chest means better battlefield strategy… lads, lads, lads😂
Moral of the story?
Bad hiring metrics have always existed. We’re just making fancier ones now
• 📤 Share this newsletter with a colleague who’s rethinking their HR strategy.
• 💬 What’s one HR challenge you’re tackling this month? Reply and let’s discuss!
• 📩 Stay ahead of the curve