Recruitment Blog

Why you should set recruitment targets for your consultants

Melinda Jennings

By Melinda Jennings

JobAdder’s 2024/25 Benchmarking Report found that a surprising 51% of respondents don’t set targets for their consultants. There are many potential benefits of target-setting for both individual consultants and the broader company, as they can promote productivity, efficiency, and the ability to benchmark performance. 

But with every agency being so different, how can you make sure you’re not setting targets for the sake of it? We spoke to Nina Mapson Bone, a leading author, people strategist, consultant, chair and keynote speaker, about why you should set targets, what that can look like, and how you can create a plan that works specifically for you and your organisation.

Benefits of setting targets for your consultants

As already mentioned, target-setting can have a profoundly positive impact on not only the performance of your agency as a whole, but on individual consultants. Targets, when set right, can help your team feel more connected to a goal, and improve work satisfaction.

With many potential benefits to setting targets, Nina dives into two of the key ones:

  1. Provide better training and support to your consultants

Nina says that one of the biggest advantages to setting targets is the ability it gives you to backwards plan. 

“When you set specific targets for your consultants, it makes it easier to work backwards and identify areas they need help with to improve,” she says.

“For example, if someone is getting jobs but not meeting their targets to fill them, you could sit in on their interviews or screenings to see what’s happening and what training they might need. Or, if someone is filling jobs fine but it’s taking too long, then there may be an issue with efficiency. You can work with them to understand where things are falling off and how you can tighten things up to get things back on track.

Target-setting isn’t about trying to catch out people where they might be failing. It’s about understanding how you can better support and train your consultants, empowering them to do better in their roles and feel more confident in their own abilities.”

  1. Get better buy-in from your consultants with personalised targets

It’s impossible to fully benefit from target-setting if your consultants haven’t opted in. To help with this, Nina suggests allowing your more experienced consultants to set personalised targets that fit with their strengths and interests (while still aligned to the broader goals of your agency).

“When you let people set their own targets, they’re much more likely to buy-in to them and feel more excited about achieving them. That sense of purpose and connection to work is so crucial,” she explains.

“As a leader, you can facilitate this process by helping your team work backwards to figure out what their targets should be to achieve what they want. For example, if you work under a commission-based model, your first question might be, ‘how much do you want to make next year?’ 

Or if your goal is about a promotion, the question might be, ‘what targets do you need to achieve to be promoted?’ 

From there, you can work out how many clients they’d need to win to achieve that commission or promotion, how many phone calls they’d need to make that many clients, and so on.

Ideally you have data to draw on from their past targets to simplify this process – another advantage of setting a precedent of target-setting.”

The risk of not setting targets for new and small agencies

While the majority of our Benchmarking Report respondents don’t set targets, newer and smaller agencies were even less likely to do so.

71% of agencies less than a year old said they don’t set targets for their consultants (compared to 53% of agencies 20+ years’ old). Nor do 61% of agencies with 1-4 consultants, a number that drops to 25% for agencies with 251-350 consultants, and just 20% with 351+ consultants.

Nina says that often smaller, newer agencies can get away with not setting targets, because it’s still manageable to have individual conversations with each consultant on how they’re performing. 

The danger here though, she warns, is this isn’t a scalable approach, and you can’t keep operating like this as your agency grows.

“When you’re an agency owner or founder working one-on-one with each consultant, you’re heavily invested in their success. This passion usually makes an agency thrive, and pretty soon you’re growing and bringing on more and more people,” she explains.

“At some point in your growth, you’ll have to put in place policies and procedures, otherwise it’s not sustainable. The problem though, is that people who have been with your agency since the beginning might be resistant to this.”

For small and new agencies, Nina says there are two approaches you can take.

“You can choose to remain a small, boutique agency. In this case, you can usually maintain the personalised, one-to-one approach to supporting your consultants,” she says.

“However, if you want to grow and build a large, successful agency, you need to be transparent upfront about the fact that things will change over time. There will be growing pains, but as long as you communicate that from the very beginning, people can choose to buy-in or not.

Bringing in some form of standardised target-setting from day one will make it easier to navigate these growing pains, and allow you to bring more people on the journey with you.”

Different types of targets you can set

In the recruiting world, ‘targets’ can mean a lot of things. Before you think about setting yours, it’s important to understand the possible variations.

In the current client-short market, Nina explains that there typically three common ways that agencies set targets:

  • At a company level: Winning the business of an entire company.
  • At an individual level: Winning a client on an individual basis, which may involve working directly with Hiring Managers or key decision makers in a business.
  • Signing a Preferred Supplier Agreement (PSA): Winning a PSA, which may not necessarily mean you’ve won any actual business yet.

Beyond client acquisition, Nina says that targets can also be set around metrics like:

  • Number of jobs filled
  • Revenue
  • Client visits
  • Number of phone calls
  • Number of candidate interview and phone screens

With so many ways to define a target, finding the approach that will suit and support the specific needs of your agency is essential.

How to set the right targets for your agency

There is no one-size-fits-all method to target-setting. Instead, Nina advises, you need to figure out what will work best for your agency.

She says there are three ways you can do this:

  1. Focus on the outcomes you want to achieve

The first place to start, Nina says, is defining the outcomes you want to achieve as an agency.

“Say your outcome is you want to have a sustainable, profitable business that places people in roles they enjoy and find meaningful and worthwhile,” she says.

“From that end goal, you can work backwards to figure out what the specific metrics of your targets should be.”

By having an outcome-first approach, Nina says it’s easier for consultants to understand the ‘why’ behind what they’re doing, rather than operating blindly to achieve set targets.

  1. Set clear parameters

When setting targets, it’s important to be clear and intentional. Nina suggests being specific with your targets, setting clear parameters that are easy for consultants to understand.

In her Leader’s Guide to Leading with Empathy, Nina advises to not only set SMART goals, but SMART+ goals.

“The ‘+’ represents the five areas not covered by the SMART definition that can make or break whether that goal will be achieved, notably:

  1. Agreed
  2. Understood
  3. Supported
  4. Reviewed
  5. Refined

Taking the time to turn your SMART goal into a SMART+ goal requires more effort upfront, but ultimately yields much better results in the long term,” she says.

  1. Improve efficiency with qualitative targets

Nina explains that many agencies fall into the trap of setting ‘quantitative’ targets – for example, make X amount of calls per day. To fully realise the benefits of target-setting, she advises you to focus on qualitative targets as well..

“If your recruiters have been tasked with simply churning out a certain number of outputs per day – such as making cold calls or conducting candidate interviews – the quality of those outputs will likely suffer,” she explains.

“Even if your recruiters are all meeting their targets of, say, 10 calls a day, those calls might be a complete waste of time, with the majority of them being made to people who are totally unsuitable. 

Setting qualitative targets, such as by defining what makes a quality call, can help you improve efficiencies and give your recruiters a sense that they’ve done meaningful work. A ‘quality call’ could mean that the person who answered meets specific agreed qualitative criteria, or that the conversation itself met certain outcomes.” 

Unlock a pathway to agency growth and success

While setting targets may seem like a straightforward approach to improving performance, the key to success lies in creating tailored, meaningful goals that align with both individual and organisational objectives. 

By focusing on clear outcomes, providing personalised support, and ensuring targets are both SMART+ and qualitative, agencies can foster a productive and engaged workforce. For smaller and newer agencies, introducing structured target-setting early on can ease the challenges of growth and ensure long-term sustainability. 

As Nina emphasises, target-setting should not be about rigidly measuring performance but about empowering consultants with the tools and support they need to thrive. With the right strategies in place, agencies can navigate the complexities of target-setting and drive lasting success.



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