Live Funnel Analysis hiring German AEs with Kathrin Holzfurtner

Thomas Kohler:
Kathrin, I really looked forward to this episode. We met somewhen, I think early last year at events then you were also part of my executive dinners. I always really, really enjoyed the conversations. And now we are here today talking about how to master funnel analysis and how to use it as a recruiter and what you can expect from. And maybe we start first with a short introduction about yourself before diving into the topic.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Wonderful. Yeah, super excited. And thank you, Thomas for having me. Hello, I’m Kathrin. I’m a global head of talent and I spent the last 16 years as talent expert in high growth tech environments, both scale up and big tech. I’m a global citizen. I lived in five different countries across across Europe and Asia in the last 15 years. So learn from a real big spectrum of cultures, operating models and ecosystems. And what really fascinates me about recruitment and talent acquisition is that TA as a profession is a really complex combination of sales people work and marketing. And the business impact talent has on organizations is huge, if we get it right.

Thomas Kohler:
Definitely. And I think you also have an interesting background in terms of experience. So where did you get your talent acquisition experience from?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, I’ve worked in a variety of organizations, big tech companies. I’ve worked for Apple, Google, Microsoft in both the EMEA and Asia region. So London, Paris, Singapore and now Germany. And I’ve also gained TA experience in a B2B SaaS Scale-Up.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes. And would you say that in all environments funnels were looked at in the same way? Did you use data to influence or to create storylines, to make decisions, or was it more visible and used in a certain environment?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
I’d say funnel analytics, data literacy are a cornerstone of every high performing TA function. So although I’d say the philosophy is the same, then at the end of the day the tools and the metrics that matter are different based on the unique context of the organization, the growth stage and also the maturity levels of the talent acquisition function. But overall, I believe data literacy and funnel optimization is really, really important to drive a continuous cycle of improvement as well.

Thomas Kohler:
And so why are we not just taking a funnel? Because we prepared some mock data and maybe afterwards I can even pull up some real data that we just first look at an overall funnel, what we can look at, how we can interpret it and then just talking through it.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, let’s do it. Let’s get practical with some funnel optimization. Placing the funnel.

Thomas Kohler:
Should I share the screen?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Go for it, Go for it.

Thomas Kohler:
Cool. So we prepared or you prepared this funnel? And we prepared for discussing through it and what we have Here is just a snapshot of six months of hiring data where accepted were the result in executive hiring. And and this is data that is going towards, let’s say Germany in 2024. H2. What do we see here, Kathrin?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, so first and foremost this really is mock data which we prepared for our conversation today. So in blue color we see the classic funnel that shows us both the volume throughput and the pass through rate for this specific scenario. And it’s also important to mention here, this is a rather high volume operation for a specific job family of a sales organization and we’re looking at the external hires and maybe taking one step back before we like really dive into the different funnel stages. I personally have learned throughout my experience as a TI leader why data really always wins and why this leveraging the funnel really is super essential to build credibility. Because firstly the funnel allows you to be super predictable. Like you can leverage the insights from a real time funnel, a historic funnel, to inform a hiring strategy, to inform your capacity plan for a future project. But also the funnel allows you to be super proactive so you can put a plan in place, be transparent ahead of kicking off a new project, so you can address challenges and mitigate risks as well with the right data points.

Thomas Kohler:
And what data in real life would you use? Would you always use the past data of half a year or a quarter or what’s currently in the pipeline or just look at benchmarks? How do you come up with this data? Because I think that’s also important, right? What’s the data source for coming up with a prediction like this?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, I think the first important step here is to understand what is the problem you’re actually solving and then really pick the data points and the success metrics that matter to solving it. And personally also I’m a believer that optimizing your funnel is both an art and a science. The science I think is fairly straightforward, right? We’re using the funnel scientific methods based on data and analytics. We reverse engineer our funnel to identify bottlenecks or to solve our problem. But I think the most important bit here is as well how you drive the change like that is really the art. There’s an element of influencing and storytelling and element of really using those metrics to answer burning business question. So before I go back to answering your question, Thomas, I think data alone or funnel data alone, the most sophisticated widgets, dashboards, whatever, they don’t transform how your business makes decisions. It’s like the signal and context you bring to the table and the way you Tell the story that helps answer the burning questions of the business.

Thomas Kohler:
And when we take an example here, for instance, we made 25 hires in half a year with this data. Let’s say next year we need to do 50 in half a year. And you have a bit limitations in resourcing. So company says you don’t get more budget, but you need to deliver more. I think that’s a realistic scenario. What companies face. What would you do in that situation?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a classic problem, right? You have a 2x scenario, 50 hires in the, in 2025 and simply doubling the team of the TA team or simply doubling the volume is just not an option. So that’s why I think the funnel really helps with a couple of steps. I’d say the first step is the funnel gives you an understanding of your reality baseline and your efficiency. And maybe let’s talk about this specific scenario. You just start looking at the throughput. So you look at last year, 5,100 candidates at the start got us 25 hires in the end. So that means there were over around 200 applications created for one single hire. And that’s where you then like double click into funnel efficiency as well, where you look at the level of input compared to the desired output.

Like what was really the level of efficiency? To what degree have you used the business and the TA resources? So an important health indicator I would look at here is the ratio between business interviews to hire. So here, if you do the maths, there were around 23 business interviews needed, onsite interviews across stage one, two and three to achieve one hire. And that’s an incredibly high ratio of business interviews to one hire. And it does suggest some inefficiencies. So also just think of the huge operational cost for one hire. So 23 times, let’s say you have a one hour interview, 23 times 60 minutes. So that’s 23 hours, like almost half a week of business time interviewing times the average salary. So that’s a huge indicator as well.

Thomas Kohler:
Kathrin, what you just did, I think is also important to just also visualize it. Right. In the meantime, I just divided everything by the number of hires. So just dividing the overall input and the output is 25 hires divided by 25. So that we know, okay, what is actually needed in an average for one hire to get this done. Right. And what I always love to do is look at one hire because I think it’s way more granular and you can also just be way more, I would say, specific about what is needed then on a weekly basis is it realistic? Yes or no. And then you can just say okay, if our target is five hires in a month for instance, because some companies really want that, right? Then we would just multiply this by five, let’s say and then we see okay, in one month we need 130 recruiter screens.

If you divide this by four again then you have 32 ta screens in a week you would need to source around 255 candidates, let’s say in a week. Because the time to source in let’s say London would be maybe 0 to 2 weeks for the right AE entering the funnel that ultimately gets the offer. But if you are now talking about Germany, you can free exist. So the time to introduce the right AE into the funnel is usually between two and six weeks that ultimately gets the offer because Germany is just there a bit more complicated. And there are factors of course where you can reduce this as well, like market knowledge. With you have a regional recruiter working on a regional sales role or you have a certain existing network of people already you can reach out to. But if you really starting new from scratch and even if you have optimized it takes way longer than also in the UK for instance. Because also German talent is a bit more hesitant for change currently as well.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, that’s where the magic of backwards modeling really comes in. When you answer the question when do you need to start hiring activity based on local notice periods, complexity of a role, your historic time to start. And as you’ve just done, you clearly know how many interviews per week are needed to get to a certain outcome, yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes. When we just look at this, right. Would you say that this is realistic to make to deliver on this weekly activities for instance where I would look at 32 recruiter screens and sourcing 250 candidates, not possible for one full time FTE in my opinion because I think then you don’t can really focus on your job. I I would even say you need one to two resources, let’s say one full time recruiter that is doing around 20 to 25 interviews. Also managing stakeholders, also managing the candidates, prepping them, following up. If you have a coordinator grade then maybe a lot of things can be taken off your plate. So you can maybe do a bit more interviews or source more or focus more on the stakeholders. Because that’s another piece, right? How can you make sure that then the interviews are done going through a calibrated interview process where hiring managers really know this is good, this is not good and they are reliable in terms of judgments. Right. Because this is also a big problem later on. So here I would say this is not possible with one person. You need maybe two. One sourcer, one recruiter or one recruiter and 0.5 FTE sourcers. How would you see that and what else do you see?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, I think the factors I’d look at are really like complexity of the role, whether you operate a 360 model or you have sources as well. But simply looking at the average time a TI specialist spends every week delivering on 32 weekly screens is a really, really lofty target. So I would probably base that lower between 20 to 25 ti screens a week.

Thomas Kohler:
And then you’re really productive. Right? If you’re reaching the 20 to 25 already.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, exactly. But that’s where really the optimization comes in and the value to portraying for stakeholders and also looking at your own forecasting and capacity planning, using the funnel data that is at our fingertips to build a really realistic scenario and then being very granular about what does it really take to achieve a certain outcome and then also positioning specific asks to C Suite. I think one particular advantage data driven TA and a funnel allows you is to elevate your business partnership with C suite senior stakeholders because you speak their language, right. You bring value and cost to the table into the conversations you need to have. Having conversations with transparency as well as clarity and a simple visualization on how you achieve business goals with the funnel data. And then you position the value you bring as a TA organization by showcasing the optimization you do, the money you save for the business so you can model current versus future state, bring the operational cost, the effort required, so the capacity, the volume per stage, the number of interview hours over time to then articulate what is feasible given your operational setup, the budget have the constraints and you can be really brief and concise, visualize gaps and then also really ask for change like advocate for the TN resources you need, advocate for the business engagement you need as well to get to a certain place. So I think that is a key indicator of I’d say a persuasive, strong and data driven TA expert like you really think design and act like a CEO based on value and cost by explaining the commercial impact of a proposed solution cost, but also the improved quality candidate relevance of potential quality of hire. So it’s a combination of both.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes. So another thing I think what is just the next step, what you also mentioned and what we see here, let’s say that the first two steps are usually expected by the TA team function, then it’s usually the hiring managers or some sales leader or sellers who maybe perform first screens or first interviews or role plays and then maybe a final call with the vp, sales, the CRO or even the founder in maybe smaller organizations. How do you make sure as a recruiter that the hiring manager, let’s say, who also maybe works on other roles or needs to manage a team of we hire 25 people, then maybe for a certain region, they have already a team of 10, 15, 25, 40, 50 people. They also have a day job and need to then do 14 interviews in a week. How do you make sure as a recruiter that this is also happening in a certain time? Because first you set the targets of within seven days after the recruiter screen, the hiring manager interview or the interview one needs to be done. I think that’s also a tricky piece, right? Because the organization screams now we need to double our hiring but we don’t get more resources. Also the sales leaders need to double the amount or maybe not even double, but maybe if you are efficient plus 50%, plus 30%. How do you achieve that?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, yeah, I think we’re both on the same page here, right? Simply double the volume at every stage, doubling the TA resources and doubling the business time spent interviewing at every stage to go from 25 hires historically to 50 hires in 2025 is not an option. If you have to optimize for resources and cost, which everyone has to nowadays, that’s not an option. So the first thing is really to think about what are the areas for improvement with the biggest impact on firstly quality, the biggest impact then on efficiency and better pass through rates and then identifying those options to deliver on the volume. So which measures and options give you outsized impact? Like doubling down on those first and then yeah, tackling the volume bit. So there’s a few things you could do. Right, so introducing a lightweight but robust process. So minimize candidate waiting time and stage reducing unnecessary handoffs.

Thomas Kohler:
Would you reduce for instance the steps and maybe make it a bit more calibrated or maybe one interview longer? But then you don’t need two 30 minute interviews for instance.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, yeah, as an example. So minimizing friction whilst upholding a rigorous assessment process. And I think that is also where the art of funnel optimization comes in to being able to understand what gives you outsized impact and oppose your core interviewing philosophy and keep some very rigorous and high quality and highly predictive assessment methodology.

Thomas Kohler:
But you also mentioned more steps what you can…

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Diagnosis is probably the most important bit, right? So looking again at this historic funnel, what are the lessons learned? What can be improved across the entire cycle to yield improvements like improvements in the conversion rates in the posture rates. So if we just go back to our scenario here and looking at the historic funnel, we see like at interview three stage for example, a posture rate of 23%. So I think what that means, if that is an executive interview, I’m just doing the mental math as we speak.

Thomas Kohler:
Just five do not. So four do not pass. One pass right out of five.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Correctly, correct. So it took us a total of 117 final interviews with a repeat sales to our yield 25 candidates. So that was probably more than more than seven candidates presented to the VP of sales for one single hire. Yeah, yeah. So that alone is a huge inefficiency and wastage. So driving up the level of alignment.

Thomas Kohler:
This is also what I see. The lower the conversion rate at the back back, the more expensive hiring gets. So you better have a low pass through rate here in the beginning, but above 66%. So if 2/3 pass the hiring manager screen, I think that’s. And then also continue to pass. That’s I think, I think a very good alignment in terms of early stage evaluation. And here it can just be it should be below 50% in my opinion or you’re very, very, very good in sourcing and everything is low and you then still have your amount of hires with the right time. Right. And low volume.

So I think that’s of course ideal because then you don’t need a lot of resources, but a lot of things need to be true in order to achieve that. But I would always prefer at the top a lot of work and then maybe not so much outcomes in terms of numbers, but then the outcome from a conversion perspective stays high.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, yeah. But I think the importance to it here is really investing in creating alignment and key expectations from the start. Very accurate filtering and healthy conversions rate from the start to end. You need to get real clarity what good looks like at the intake stage. I think that is super critical. What you need to do is job analysis, clear definition of attributes, proficiency level, scoring rubrics, really doing the discovery work on target Personas, market intel, even conducting sourcing and calibration ahead of the intake and then making sure there’s a real mutual understanding among every panel member on the respective focus area. Attributes, skills, proficiency levels, scoring rubrics so that you have a quantifiable and mutual understanding what we’re looking for and what good looks like. And I think the funnel we’re seeing here as well in blue could potentially reveal inefficiencies and misalignment.

If you double click for example into the interview stages 1, 2 and 3 and looking at the 68% conversion rate at interview 1, which looks very healthy at first sight, but actually it could reveal a lack of alignment that then compounds over time and leads to a knockout and a very poor posture rate at the third stage.

Thomas Kohler:
Yes, so exactly. Having lower pass through rates at the bottom beside the offer accepted is way. I would say. Sorry, a high pass through rate. A high pass through rate towards the lower end of the funnel is way more impactful than having a high pass through rate at the beginning of the funnel. Right. If the pass through right overall is always high and you make the hires and the hires perform all fine, all good. But if there is a low pass through rate somewhere at the bottom, that’s usually something what you should maybe optimize in the beginning and you through calibration, alignment and everything. So there are a lot of frameworks in recruitment what you can do, but it just takes time, right.

And then maybe you have, if you grow your sales headcount by a double amount, you maybe also have fluctuation organizational changes in the sales organization. So you always get new interviewers and then they need to train to have a new style. They’re hired from a new organization, from a different or into a different phase of the company, from a different stage, from another company. They have their own playbook, their own biases, everything customized, bringing it to the table. So change and ambiguity. Change is really fighting the quality of hiring, in my opinion, because you always need to anticipate new changes. And in order to do that, you also need time to get some experience with the new hiring team members with all the changes and then review the impact of the changes and then iterate on it. So it’s a double ending process, right?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, it is. But I guess that’s why talent acquisition is both a science as well as an art, right? The science is the analytical approach we bring to the table. But the art is then to use strong signal and the metrics that matter to influence and create alignment. Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
Kathrin, a side note. When I’m talking to you, I always really like talking about talent acquisition and feel like it’s a real profession. Sometimes when I’m just sitting somewhere listening to people that maybe make their first hires or do some hiring, then you have the feeling, oh, everybody can do hiring. Right. And everybody knows it better than you. But I think if you are and I think everybody has an opinion on hiring because a lot of people need to hire all the managers that staff their teams. They need to hire. Right.

Independent if they’re 30 years experience or just first time managers or hiring managers. And there are characters that have strong opinions and not so strong opinions. Right. So I think this is why it’s even more important as a talent acquisition professional to know how you can showcase the work you’re doing, the profession you’re doing and the impact of it. Right. What’s in for them? If you do your job, great. If they collaborate with you well. And that’s the real profession in my opinion.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah. And I believe talent acquisition overall has a huge opportunity to lean even more into the financial impact and the business impact of what we do. So let’s say we leverage our funnel to outline exactly what we need to achieve 50 hires in the coming year. We need to explain the commercial impact of our proposed solutions and that is really using data to articulate the value we bring. So avoiding empty chair time. Right. And the respective cost that is actually money we’re making for the business. Like being really intentional about the language we are using.

We’re not just saving costs, we’re making money for the business. We’re saving business hours and operational cost through an optimized hiring process. And obviously the focus on quality of hire and more relevant talent in the funnel. Delivering the right people at the right time and then also retention and quality metrics playing a bigger role. I think that entire package is something TA can do even more of to become more relevant and to hone the value we bring. Yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
How did you learn all of this?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
That is a tough question. I don’t think there is a school for talent acquisition. We know there’s no school such thing as academic background. I probably think it’s a mix of having strong role models being thrown into the deep end, working with data, with messing data, tackling chaos and then also making lots of mistakes and failing forward. Like learning from the mistakes and like sharpening your toolbox by every single. Yeah. Failure. So standing up, doing a retrospective and leveraging the ecosystem around you to get better each day.

And what I mean with that is really co creating with the stakeholders. Like if you make funnel optimization and retrospectives and regular data reviews a habit and not a one time fix, then you become proactive, then you become predictable because you talk about real time recruiting data as well as commercial impact of what you do and then it’s not an emotional discussion anymore. So then challenges…

Thomas Kohler:
You also review it over time. Right. And you can also then experience the journey, how the data develops. And what does this in real life mean instead of doing it one time and not looking at it anymore?

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Kohler:
So Kathrin, what I can add here, 100% agree what you’re saying. I learned this especially on how to pull up the data from finance. I think a lot of HR or talent acquisition professionals, they maybe are not close with finance or think finance. They are the evil who are signing off the budget plan without considering the final metrics. And then you are the one needing to deliver the unrealistic. Right. And yes, that’s happening. But I think when you are able to understand how finance, finance works in an organization, how budgets work in an organization, then you have, I would say way, way more leverage and power as a talent acquisition manager, recruiter organization that you know what’s coming and that you already prepare for it.

So I then sometimes just used making a hiring plan tied to the budget and then just trying to understand, okay, if the budget is signed off, how would then the hiring plan need to look like? And just taking the current assumptions we have and then creating a formula and making sure that everything is just backwards planned even further. And what often is the outcome that budgets are signed off, let’s say in December, started in September, October. And then once Talent acquisition gets the real plan, it’s maybe already January, right? The leaders maybe know already November, December. But until everything is really signed off and approved and kicked off, it’s maybe January. And when you then do your backwards planning exercise, you. You find out, oh, we should have started in July. Yeah, but then you cannot go back to July anymore. So what you’re just saying doing it regularly, doing it in a data driven way, together with the business, together with the managers, whoever it is, and then just always being conscious about where are we actually standing.

What does this even mean for the business? What are realistic timelines? What are realistic, realistic resources needed to deliver certain outcomes? If you can close this gap, you are usually not the one being on the receiving end when realistic, unrealistic plans need to be delivered. Because then at least everybody knows what is actually realistic. And then you independent maybe need to do it anyway, make it work somehow. But then it’s not this emotional pressure on the function or on yourself. I think that’s really important.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, I really agree. I think understanding the financial model and the commercial landscape of the business you’re supporting is not nice to have anymore. And that’s where really data driven and high business impact TA teams always outperform their peers every single day because you’re in control. You measure proactively, you measure regularly, and you tie TA resource requirements, business resource requirements and capacity to the financial model over time. So you build a muscle not just of continuous improvement, but you tie the TA data and the commercial data together, and that really builds credibility and predictability as well.

Thomas Kohler:
Thanks, Kathrin. So I think that’s a very nice closing. Thank you so much for the data, for the great preparation and collaboration. I really liked the episode. And everybody who wants to reach out can reach you on LinkedIn, I guess.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Yeah, hook up on LinkedIn. I’m looking forward to the conversations.

Thomas Kohler:
Cool. Thanks. See you.

Kathrin Holzfurtner:
Bye.