It floors me that a full 20 years after I did my graduate research project (Integrating HR into the Strategic Business Plan’)—a topic that in my own mind was hardly revolutionary— that there are still recruiters out there who see themselves as just another ’spoke on the rim’ rather than part of an engineered system of mutually supporting components that keeps the show moving. And when will it dawn on the recruiting world that the really senior executives (the CEO’s and SVP’s) don’t care a whit about your recruiting metrics, they only care how you can help THEIR metrics?

I’ve been coaching a few potential candidates about the importance of quantifying what they’ve done and their accomplishments. This article provides an even more concrete explanation of the articulation process.

As I read your story about the recruiter’s performance review, I kept asking ‘But compared to what?’ He did 89 placements but the average is 70, so that what he was saying was he exceeded expectations? There were other points he made and at each one I kept wondering, compared to what? And I kept wondering what his required performance was supposed to be.

No doubt he was quite proud of how well prepared he was for his performance review. Your article also showed that merely going in with a bunch of numbers is not sufficient. It needs to be in relation to a comparator. This factor was implied in your writing, it wasn’t explicit.

And you also articulated something that gets overlooked so much in this industry — how your activities have benefitted the client and in what way.

There’s a lot of rush to make the placement with the ‘right fit’ or the ‘best candidate.’ You’ve shown us that there’s more to be done. There’s more to be understood.

Thanks for the great write.

Viva

Excellent article.. Hope to see more of your advice. We need more of this type of quality content.

Yet again, another fabulous post. Thank you! I really like the way you think! In fact, I liked your last article about the importance of providing a good candidate experience as it relates to your brand so useful that I cited it, with full credit to you of course, at a presentation I gave here in Dallas. I think you are definitely helping to push the industry into an even more professional, consultative place. Kudos yet again.

Your fan in Dallas,

You are quickly becoming my favorite author here on ERE :-)

Excellent points in todays article. We do need to be aware of certain metrics internally to our recruiting organization to measure workload, efficiency, cost, source utilization, etc. But the only thing that management is and should be concerned about is how our efforts affect the organization’s bottom line. The better job we do at reporting to management our value in terms of our effect on the bottom line, the better off our recruiting organizations will be in getting that coveted ’seat-at-the-table.’

Another great article to share with my colleagues as we continue to think about what metrics are most relevant to our firm’s leaders.

Second, take it one step further with measurements of this type:

26% of the recruits were at job knowledge mastery 2 weeks ahead of the new recruit average. This translates into a 7% higher average transaction value from these new representatives.

Or

98% of those hired passed their licensing exam on the first attempt, thus reducing the cost of on-boarding by $4,000 per candidate ($ = X )

Or

Based upon Tenure Risk scores, we should see a 50% increase in first year retention from this group, thus reducing staffing waste and re-work by $XX,XXX. I will report the 6 month actual year over year change next month.

Thoreau said: ‘It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants.’ The question is, ‘What are we busy about?’

Excellent article Lisa!