Let's start by identifying some of the biggest yield losses in the recruiting process and begin improving these. Starting with the worst, here are just basic metrics you might want to consider to achieve our goal:

1. Interviewing accuracy. How many good candidates have you lost due to interviewing errors on the part of your clients? How many candidates have you sent to your clients that weren't very good? This is a lot of wasted energy. The typical unstructured interview is only 7% more accurate than flipping a coin, and when you put two or more people together to assess competency accuracy declines further. Here are some articles to read on how to improve interviewing accuracy by 50% and in the process reduce your sendouts per hire in half.
2. Candidate opt-out rate for all causes. Most companies don't track end-to-end yield for candidates applying online. To get a rough handle on this statistic, multiply the number of candidates who see your ad and actually apply (probably less than 20%) by the number of people who apply and voluntarily say they're not interested sometime later in the process, including those who reject your offer (probably around 40-50%). Here are some advertising related articles that might help improve your yield here.
3. Candidate did not apply rate because the application process was cumbersome. At ERE's Spring 2007 EXPO a monster.com spokesman said that companies that parse a candidate's auto-uploaded resume into an application are completed 75% of the time. When the candidate is forced to complete the application from scratch, the apply rate is less than 20%. Ask your web guy how well you're doing on this and then change the process to get a three-fold improvement if needed.
4. Cold-calling passive candidate voice mail return rate. Most recruiters don't get more than 10-15% of their calls returned from passive candidates. This means that 85% or more of the time you're wasting your time. The key here is to only call referred candidates if you'd want to increase your return call rate by five times. This change alone will achieve the double the placements in half the time goal if you're placing passive candidates.Cold calling conversion to worthy candidate rate. Even if a passive candidate does return your call, the likelihood that this person is a viable candidate is less than 20%. Why bother making cold calls if few are returned and even those that are turn out to be worthless? From this moment forward make sure you prequalify every referral and then only call the good ones. Done properly, this will increase your productivity by another three to four times.
5. Candidates lost due to late response. As the feeding frenzy for strong performers increases, moving fast is becoming more important. Good candidates who do apply must be called within 24 hours and interviewed within 48 hours. If you're making calls to candidates who say they've already taken another offer, you have a major problem here. Start tracking this stat and then fix your processes if you have a problem. You're wasting your sourcing efforts if your systems are too slow to respond.

Of course this list could go on and on, but the point here is that recruiting is really a yield management process, and if you don't play it that way, you're sure to lose. In this case losing means you're expending too much effort to finding and hiring quality candidates. To double your placement rate in half the time, first find the biggest yield losses in your process, then work on cutting them in half. Based on the above yield problem solutions this should be an easy goal to achieve.

If you're a recruiter placing primarily passive candidates you need to stop calling anyone but pre-qualified referred candidates. Developing deep networks of highly qualified people will allow you to deliver top people in days of taking the assignment. Corporate recruiters using online advertising to attract people need to make sure their ads are both found by the right people and the right people apply. It only takes marginal improvements in either of these sourcing techniques to give you more than twice as many good candidates with the same amount of time.

In parallel to these efforts find out why your best prospects are opting-out. If could be you're making your offers too soon, or giving away too much information too soon. One clue you have a problem here is if your candidates routinely say they're not interested before they know anything about the job. This is the best clue yet the recruiter doesn't understand the basic principles of applicant control. And better applicant control from beginning to end is the easiest way to cut your time in half. (Here are some articles on this topic. Better: attend Recruiter Boot Camp Online.)

So the secret of doubling your placement rate in half the time is easily achievable--applying applicant control in combination with slightly better sourcing. Recruiting can be a systematic and scalable business process or it can be a numbers game. The choice is up to you. As far as I'm concerned, hiring top people is too important to leave to chance.