Are You Measuring Your Redeployment Rates? You Should Be

Redeployment matters. This is why.

Do you know your staffing firm’s redeployment rate?

If not, how can you know how a failure to redeploy talent affects your firm’s bottom line? And how do you know your true cost per hire?

According to a 2014 industry survey, less than 6 percent of staffing firms even measure redeployment rates.

Have no fear, that’s why we built Sense. We can help you track your redeployment rates. But first, let’s learn some more about why redeployment rate is such a key metric for staffing firms, and how it affects you.

What is Redeployment Rate?

The redeployment rate is the percentage of contractors placed in a new assignment after their current one ends.

Staffing firms have been around for a while, but most firms simply don’t track their redeployment rate.

This matters because if your redeployment rate is high, while other staffing firms are pounding the pavement trying to get new talent to stick into the top of their funnel, you could be saving time and money by redeploying the talent you’ve already acquired.

How Does Redeployment Rate Affect You?

Imagine a company with a redeployment rate of 10%. This company is essentially using 90% of their operations to rehire people they lost by not redeploying them.

Compare this to a company with a 50% redeployment rate. This second company is going to be way more profitable, simply because they manage to consistently redeploy half their talent year over year.

If you double your redeployment rate, you’ll increase your gross revenue by 20%!

So how does redeployment affect your staffing firm at a practical level?

1. Candidates care about redeployment

If there isn’t a good trendline in your company for redeployment, candidates are actually less likely to choose you. If the vast majority of your talent only stays with you for one assignment, what are the chances that they’ll choose you over a competitor staffing firm with a 50% redeployment rate?

2. Redeployment correlates closely to cost per hire

Your cost per hire is probably much higher than your competitors. When you redeploy somebody, you save on referral fees, resumes views, and additional background checks. If you don’t decrease your cost per hire, you will be less competitive.

3. High redeployments reduces job board costs

Are you paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to job boards like Monster, Indeed, and CareerBuilder? Do you want to reduce your recruitment advertising spend? Start by increasing your redeployment rate, and you’ll find yourself spending way less money posting jobs.

Tips and Tricks for Increasing Your Redeployment Rates

So how do you actually do it? Here’s a process that has worked for our staffing firms.

Step 1: Measure it

You can’t track or improve what you don’t measure. It’s that simple. You’d be amazed how many staffing firms we talk to who simply aren’t measuring redeployment.

Step 2: Set a goal for improving

The next step is to set a goal for what you would like your redeployment rate to be a year from now. We also suggest setting incremental quarterly goals so that you can track your progress toward your twelve-month goal.

Step 3: Engage, connect, prepare

Now that you’re measuring and have a goal for improving redeployment rates at a company level, improving comes down to how you work with your candidates directly.

1. Engage. Talk to people well before their assignment ends, get updated resumes, and have a conversation about the kind of position your candidate would like to take next. Help your candidates spruce up their resume if needed, collect references, and gather feedback from their current assignment so that their next placement can be even better than the last.
2. Connect. Figure out where you can submit a candidate. Dig up every single job position where that contractor would be a good fit. Even partner with a third party, if required, to find more job opportunities. Finally, have a goal — a good place to start is that you want to schedule at least four interviews for a candidate before their current assignment ends.
3. Prepare. Make sure you stay engaged to prepare your candidate for every interview. Tell them as much as you know about the hiring manager or group they will be talking to. Make sure they’ve researched the company. Give them every possible tool to ensure they have a good interview, and you will increase their likelihood of success.

Sense helps staffing firms engage with their talent throughout the lifecycle of a contractors — from recruitment to redeployment — and keep them engaged.

Want to learn how Sense doubled the redeployment rate of a leading staffing firm? We bet you do. Contact us to find out how we can help you increase your bottom line.