How Talent Acquisition Managers Can Increase Offer Acceptance Rates

Much of the daily routine of Talent Acquisition Managers is to monitor recruitment metrics, track what works and stop what’s not. It is also important to increase the positive trends wherever possible. One metric that Talent Acquisition Managers covet above all others is the offer acceptance rates. In the age of “The Great Resignation” where people are quitting their jobs en masse, it has become increasingly important to boost offer acceptance rates as much as possible. Yet, how is that done these days? There are a number of ways to accomplish this and they all point to research.

1. Track where most of your hires are coming from

If you work for an enterprise level organization then, there are many talent analytic tools that can give you an overview of the companies you tend to hire from. Among them: LinkedIn Insights, Emsi, CareerBuilder Supply and Demand, One Model and Talent Neuron. Each has their own nuances but all can give a good general overview of the market. If you have a smaller company, you may have to devote some time pulling information from your applicant tracking system. Questions you may want to ask…

• Who are our major competitors for talent?
• Where do our competitors tend to recruit from? 
• Where are these companies located? 
• How do their job descriptions compare to yours? 
• How do their employer value propositions compare to yours? 
• How do their salaries compare to yours? (Use tools like Payscale and Salary.com to find this out.)  
• What are their employees saying about them on employee review sites like Glassdoor? 

Create a list of companies from this data and share this logic with the recruiting team. If we tend to hire from these specific companies and/or companies like these, make them the priority targets when sourcing. Strategies like this will increase the likelihood of accepted offers because they are based on verifiable trends. Moreover, knowing how you stack up to the competition in terms of salary, benefits and employee experience will make it easy to negotiate offers; which brings me to my next point. 

2. Have recruiters address and set salary expectations in the screening process

A lot of time would be saved if Recruiters and/or Sourcers managed expectations of salary and benefits in advance of compensation negotiations, but what would that look like? Here are a few queries to put this idea in context.     

• What is your dream job? 
• What are your long-term career goals? 
• What salary is reasonable for someone with your experience and background? 
• Would you take a dream job that paid less than what you feel you deserved? If not, what would convince you to accept it? 
• If I offered you a salary of X for your dream job or one similar to it, would you put in your notice at your present-day job today? If not, why not? 

Armed with this information, the actual interview would be anti-climatic. With an understanding of how goals/compensation are aligned, prior to getting too far in the interview process, the hiring manager is able to focus on the candidate and what they offer versus worrying about not talking to candidates because they assume there won't be any goal/compensation alignment. 

3. Use your company target list on your own applicant tracking system

In my first point, I described how to build a company target list for sourcing purposes. Apply that same information to candidates inside your applicant tracking system. More than any other tactic, this will increase your offer acceptance rates because you are focused on people who already expressed interest by virtue of their job application. 

Doing everything right will not guarantee a 100% offer acceptance rate. However, constantly tweaking this algorithm (of sorts) of targeting certain companies, advance salary negotiations, and focusing first on candidates in your application tracking systems will produce a positive trend in increasing your acceptance rates.