The Data Recruiters Use to Sell Themselves — And How to Evaluate It

Evaluating a Recruiter's Sales Pitch

Most businesses compile data (often massaged data) to demonstrate that they are excellent at what they do.

Recruiters use a number of tools intended to measure data points that might include things like:

• Fill Rates: Or retained searches that result in a successful placement

• Time to fill: Faster can be better so long as corners aren’t cut. However, there are so many variables in estimating the benchmark. I am highly skeptical of firms that provide a hard number. I can only speak for Portico. Once we start a search, we move quickly, but a search is dependent on the labour market, position details, marketability, and a client's response time. A firm can move quickly, but they have no placement crystal ball.

• Offer acceptance rate. I don’t think this needs much explanation, but hopefully, if the recruiter and employer are being consistent with how the job has been marketed, the rate should be very high. The general understanding is that the rate for a good recruiter should lay between 90% to 95%. I’ve done the data mining for Portico, and it is in the 95% area with the remaining 5% often due to factors beyond the control of the firm. For example, “bait and switch” by a client. That’s never a good recruiting strategy and almost always blows up an offer of employment.

• The retention rates of placements. More to follow on this one.

• The replacement rate or how often a recruiting firm needs to invoke its guarantee and initiate a replacement at no cost to the client

• Repeat business rates. This will vary depending on the market. Generally, a good repeat business rate is 70% to 80%, but that will depend on the size of the workforce and ongoing staffing needs. Obviously, a home will have a smaller workforce than an Amazon warehouse and the repeat business rate will reflect that. I’ll add that repeat client business in the domestic market might not be a thoroughly good thing. It might be an indicator of high staff turnover, which is a red flag for candidates.

• Diversity of types of placements. If a firm is primarily placing housekeepers that is where their expertise lays. If the positions are more diverse, that is a strength recruiters can play upon, so assigning a percentage to each position might be a good thing—food for thought.

I’m sure there are plenty of others, but I want to focus on retention, because it’s an interesting one in domestic staff recruitment.

Core Values Matter

After explaining my professional background and Portico’s history, market focus, fees, guarantees, etc., I am usually asked the following:

• How long will it take to fill a position? I expect the question. I also hate the question because while I am in control of how quickly I work (I work very quickly), I am not in control of the labour market and how it will respond to any given job. I know there are plenty of recruiters who are more than happy to throw out a highly promising number, but—surprise, surprise—they are only guessing and hoping for the best and potentially creating circumstances for disappointed clients. 

• Because Portico is a retained recruiting firm, I am asked about our placement rate, which makes perfect sense. I am careful to take on only those jobs in which I feel there is a high-level for success. That doesn’t necessarily mean, I only take on simple work. What I do mean is the client demonstrates they are good employers and the job on offer is a marketable one—salary in alignment with the labour market, vacation, reasonable duties, job title consistent with duties (Estate Managers are not Nannies), benefits, etc. My firm is not in the business of collecting retainers (some are). Our bread and butter is in making placements and our success rate for 2025 was at 95% as mentioned previously.

Here is the big question:

What is the retention rate of your placements?

In my jurisdiction there is only a single recruiter that publicizes their retention rate. They nail the number at 98%, which is an amazing number if true. Here is the problem with the figure. While promoting the number, no methodology is identified that describes how it is reached and under what criteria. Without a statistical methodology, the number will only ever be just a number.

Why?

Is it based on 6 months, 12 months, or more? Is it for full-time and permanent placements or temporary/ seasonal ones? Does it include replacements based on the firm’s guarantee? Does it include resignations or only terminations? What benchmarks have been used to add credibility to the figure? How is retention data gathered? Is it via a 6-month, 12-month, or longer check in? What’s the sample size? A boutique recruiter might have a higher retention rate than a larger contingency-based recruiter. Is there a check in or is no news, good news? These are important questions.

Know the Methodology Behind Statistics

I’ll add the following non-recruiter factors that, depending on the methodology used, will skew retention rate percentages. For example:

• A job is eliminated due to a change in the employer’s finances

• The family relocates

• There is a health issue that arises

• And so on

If there are no standards for collecting data, a recruiter is taking a business strategy risk publicizing a retention rate when another recruiter is using a different statistical methodology, or no methodology at all. 

Here’s another twist, how frequently do people examine how statistics are gathered? Ask yourself, when was the last time you looked at the fine print methodology for a political poll result? I suspect methodologies are seldom read. In other words, what might be an unexamined pie-in-the-sky 98% figure for one firm, could be far lower for another that bothers with proper, methodology-based, data mining. Understanding methodology matters. It is part of an employer doing their due diligence when engaging a recruiter’s services. 

The ongoing issue with domestic staff recruitment in general is that no code of conduct exists. It creates confusion in the market and produces all sorts of opportunities for unscrupulous recruiters to say what they want to secure the engagement. Sometimes an honest recruiter’s efforts are recognized and rewarded. I hate to say it, but that’s not the usual result. More often than not, clients engage with the recruiter who says what the client wants to hear.

And if that last sentence is true (it isn’t always), why go through the effort of accurate retention rate data mining when others are simply pulling numbers out of the sky? It’s a valid question.

Recruiting: It’s never as simple as those outside the industry think. I wish it were.

One other thing... Buyer Beware.

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